More Than Enough

By Marge Piercy b. 1936 Marge Piercy

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.

All over the sand road where we walk

multiflora rose climbs trees cascading

white or pink blossoms, simple, intense

the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy

clumps of flower and the blackberries

are blooming in the thickets. Season of

joy for the bee. The green will never

again be so green, so purely and lushly

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads

into the wind. Rich fresh wine

of June, we stagger into you smeared

with pollen, overcome as the turtle

laying her eggs in roadside sand.

Marge Piercy's latest book of poetry is Colors Passing Through Us (Knopf, 2003); her new novel Sex Wars (Morrow/Harper Collins) will be out in December. Poem copyright © 2003 by Marge Piercy and reprinted from The Paterson Literary Review with permission of the author.

Source: Colors Passing Through Us (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003)

Biography

Marge Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, into a working-class family that had been hard-hit by the Depression. Piercy was the first member of her family to attend college, winning a scholarship to attend the University of Michigan. She received an MA from Northwestern University. During the 1960s, Piercy was an organizer in political movements like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the movement against the war . . .

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