Poetry Friday: Putting the Good Things Away

Putting the Good Things Away, by Marge Piercy

In the drawer were folded fine
batiste slips embroidered with scrolls
and posies, edged with handmade
lace too good for her to wear.

Daily she put on schmatehs
fit only to wash the car
or the windows, rags
that had never been pretty

even when new: somewhere
such dresses are sold only
to women without money to waste
on themselves, on pleasure,

to women who hate their bodies,
to women whose lives close on them.
Such dresses come bleached by tears,
packed in salt like herring.

Yet she put the good things away
for the good day that must surely
come, when promises would open
like tulips their satin cups

for her to drink the sweet
sacramental wine of fulfillment....

Read the rest of the poem here

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My grandmother on my father's side bought a blue silk kimono in case she ever had to go to the hospital. She didn't want to wear the hospital gowns, after all. My grandma tucked away the blue silk kimono, but when one of her daughters admired it so, my grandmother gave it to her. Some time after, my grandmother found a green silk kimono to wear for that day in the future when she might have to go to the hospital. Her other daughter admired it so, and thus my grandmother gave away the green kimono. My grandmother then bought a bright red kimono. She showed it to me, and told me about how she had already given away the other two kimonos. "It is indeed a lovely kimono," I said.

"You should take it then," she said.

"But what about when you go to the hospital?" I asked.

"Eh!" she said with scorn, and made me take the red kimono.

Some time after that, my grandmother did have to go to the hospital. She wore the hospital gowns. A year later, when I was in college, I ruefully sent her "Putting the Good Things Away" and my own response poem about my grandmother, written in my Women's Poetry and Performance class.

Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Farm School.