Marge Piercy

What It Costs
Now it costs to say
I will survive, now when
my words coat my clenched
teeth with my blood, now
when I have been yanked 
off love like a diver
whose hose is cut.
I push against 
the dizzying onslaught
of heavy dark water.
Up or down? While
the heart kicks
like a strangled rabbit
and the lungs buckle
like poor balloons:
I will survive.

I will lift the leaden
coffin lid of the surface
and thrust my face
into the air.
I will feel the sun's 
rough tongue on my face.
Then I'll start swimming
toward the coast
that must somewhere 
blur the horizon
with wheeling birds.


Apologies

Moments
when I care about nothing
except an apple:
red as a maple tree
satin and speckled
tart and whiny.

Moments
when body is all:
fast as an elevator
pulsing out waves of darkness
hot as the inner earth
molten and greedy.

Moments
when sky fills my head:
bluer than thought
cleaner than number
with a wind
fresh and sour
cold from the mouth of the sea.

Moments
of sinking my teeth
into now like a hungary fox:
never otherwise
am I so cruel;
never otherwise
so happy.             

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