Side Effects

Rain is crawling over the roof
like a millipede, scuttling.

Out on the highway across
a marsh, crash, one scream.

Sirens. That would have
wakened me if I'd been able

to sleep. I dreamt of war
and it brought me stark awake

explosions and torn limbs
like the parts of discarded

bloody dolls on the hard
baked ground, dead goats,

cats, dogs, songbirds trapped
in the hell we make. We

forget whole ecosystems
are blown apart and gone.

War is for making a few rich
while many perish, but we count

only dead soldiers not all
those who get in our way.

Copyright 2008 Marge Piercy. Marge Piercy is an acclaimed author and teacher whose most recent poetry collection is The Crooked Inheritance (Alfred A. Knopf).