Traveling Dream in  General   

I am packing to go to the airport
but somehow I am never packed.
I keep remembering more things
I keep forgetting.

Secretly the clock is bolting
forward ten minutes at a click
instead of one. Each time
I look away, it jumps.

Now I remember I have to find
the cats. I have four cats
even when I am asleep.
One is on the bed and I slip

her into the suitcase.
One is under the sofa. I
drag him out. But the tabby
in the suitcase has vanished.

Now my tickets have run away.
Maybe the cat has my tickets.
I can only find one cat.
My purse has gone into hiding.

Now it is time to get packed.
I take the suitcase down.
There is a cat in it but no clothes.
My tickets are floating in the bath

tub full of water. I dry them.
One cat is in my purse
but my wallet has dissolved.
The tickets are still dripping.

I look at the clock as it leaps
forward and see I have missed
my plane. My bed is gone now.
There is one cat the size of a sofa.

By Marge Piercy

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Other poems by Marge Piercy:

• A Work Of Artifice
• Always Unsuitable
• Attack of the Squash People
• Barbie Doll
• Belly Good
• Colors Passing Through Us
• For the Young Who Want To
• Implications of One Plus One
• The Friend
• The Morning Half-Life Blues
• The Neighbor
• The Seven Of Pentacles
• The Woman in the Ordinary
• To Be of Use
• To the Pay Toilet
• Toad Dreams
• Traveling Dream
• Visiting a Dead Man on a Summer Day
• What Are Big Girls Made Of?
• Winter Promises
• You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop