Traveling dream
Traveling dream
Original Text
© Marge Piercy. Seattle Review 20.1 (1998)
1I am packing to go to the airport
2but somehow I am never packed.
3I keep remembering more things
4I keep forgetting.
5Secretly the clock is bolting
6forward ten minutes at a click
7instead of one. Each time
8I look away, it jumps.
9Now I remember I have to find
10the cats. I have four cats
11even when I am asleep.
12One is on the bed and I slip
13her into the suitcase.
14One is under the sofa. I
15drag him out. But the tabby
16in the suitcase has vanished.
17Now my tickets have run away.
18Maybe the cat has my tickets.
19I can only find one cat.
20My purse has gone into hiding.
21Now it is time to get packed.
22I take the suitcase down.
23There is a cat in it but no clothes.
24My tickets are floating in the bath
25tub full of water. I dry them.
26One cat is in my purse
27but my wallet has dissolved.
28The tickets are still dripping.
29I look at the clock as it leaps
30forward and see I have missed
31my plane. My bed is gone now.
32There is one cat the size of a sofa.
Publication Start Year
1998
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 2000.
Rhyme
Form
Special Copyright
<b>This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of Marge Piercy, Leapfrog Press or Knopf permissions department.</b>