Paradise Is Every Night

We snuggle in our bed together,
remembering all we need to know

for now, and glad for life. Time
hurries past us, faster than before.

But even though you struggle
climbing up our narrow stairs,

can't do the many tasks you did
so perfectly before — you help   

to chase away the gloom lurking
underneath our bed, and silence

hovering in our attic. I reach
to touch your hand, or you find mine.

Some doors have closed. But I,
because of you, can still feel joy.

back to issue

Marilyn Marsh Noll earned her MFA in Creative Writing at American University in Washington, D.C. in 1994. Her poems have appeared in the Comstock Review, Folio, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Potter's Wheel, Voices from the Attic, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Thirteen Ways of Looking at Bones, won the Pennsylvania Poetry Society Chapbook Award in 2007. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.