If you are the Mississippi,
let me be
the Minnesota
flowing urgently
toward you, our
confluence
a point
of serious contention, water
marking all maps—virtual and real.
Month: September 2009
Ars Poetica Reuse
Lost and found
art lost
and found art is
the moment
I mark
with this pen.
Northern Sources
Into the marsh go
questions of origin. Answers
rarely come out.
To name
a place is to be so bold
as to believe
in harnessing habitats
for one’s own. At least
as long as it takes
for a new map
to be drawn and published.
I prefer to believe
in the unfolding
and refolding
of lyric terrains—they sing
for themselves.
Upper Saint Anthony Falls Lock and Dam
As old as me—water
held to rise
level to the north, water
rushes out
level to the south.
The only true falls
the entire length of this mighty river.
I could be the lock master
in another life. Mitre-shaped,
the gates won’t open
till equilibrium returns. I wish
mine worked so well
after all these years.
Little Turtle Lake
Frogs dart across moist areas of a tended path,
grasshoppers take the dry,
beavers’ work evident by the dead
trees in a still pond—no sign
of the maker, everywhere there.
I step into another woman’s childhood landscape
and can smell my own
in this boathouse on a lake. Fresh
or salt water, it floats. Nothing gets trapped underfoot.
Day 2,298
I don’t believe in martyrs,
don’t always believe
my eyes. It’s the primary colors.
They endanger me
with their solid, waiverless
stairs to nowhere better
in black and white. Dirty
snow or marble, maybe
we did meet once before
this day that tips
toward the melt. What if
we were lovers? What
does that make us
now that the boisterous
hues of another summer
have bled away
their urgency? I don’t need
to teach you the difference
between complementary
and complimentary. “How lovely
you look beside me
on this wheel—that cochineal becomes you,
even against his brown,” the yellow says
to the red. I might start
to believe in plastic orange
picks scattered in the street.
And I might pick one up for you
and who you were before.
Bridge
For MJN crossing beneath,
for NYC connecting across,
for The Brooklyn Bridge rescue working destiny
Advance your vantage
point,
this bridge,
collapse your facade of steel,
your gutted concrete floor.
Collide your bridge maker
with mine,
collage your instinctive hand
over mouth with my eyes shut,
vocal chords spewing forth—
a scream
a void
to coalesce to convalesce
on one bridge
of material unidentifiable yet.
Coordinate the crossing,
bare feet, dust, and ash caked faces
no veil could protect,
suits meaningless,
ties undone
till they become arms swaying,
a human chain
of events.
A human behavior changing
never
no way
when
now
your bridge maker, mine,
his, hers.
They designed bridges
to be passageways.
Make them destinations
to be good to get no further
than this, this bridge
cannot be
a boundary
because bridges connect.
It is still where it has been,
the destination stands
between these pedestrian elevating towers
still here.
The Take No Heroes Hotel
Welcome to the inn
where no reservations are taken, where
possession is one quarter, obsession
one more,
the other half
a lifetime spent designing the perfect
room where relinquishment adorns
each and every square foot of space
to walk
away from each and every hero
you took, she took, he took,
we all took,
save ourselves. Welcome
to the color
of the first suit you swam in,
to the sound
of the first dive you performed. Welcome
to the taste
of the first sea scallop you craved, to the touch
of the first porch
you danced upon—it is,
always was,
The Take No Heroes Hotel
where we belong.
Sea Dumpster Divers
What the storm asserted
the wave to lash,
what the hull cracking
separated bow from stern forever,
what settled to ocean floor slowly
will reconstitute salvaged treasure.
If two people
someday dive into our wreck—
and they will—to collect
our splintered mass
of a life gone askew,
piece by piece,
what they bring to the surface,
what they examine
will be the new us,
will be a restoration,
regeneration, the religion of us
carted to the surface
alive in their palms.
Letter #3 to the Mississippi
She seeks a childhood face
along the East Bank, diverted and spilled onto
an empty road, old railroad
tracks framing its riverside.
That this widening band of water flowing south
could be the same river
as the tiny channel
she waded through yesterday up north,
that this unsalted navigational pulse
could reckon with her North Atlantic bias
could all be a signal
calling her to pause here
behind a brick building in an old rail yard
(only a slice of river visible) to see how
no other word, even in this midst,
besides saudade will do.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 