Water meets water,
she turns to witness
your exchange. A stick
snag mud morning
before the sun breaches
all birth of unwoven sound. She turns again
to wait
the long steel blue
wait. It’s got to be
a full moon tonight.
Author: Arambler
Roadhouse Revisited (Day 365)
She will answer her own question
with another question wrapped
inside a brilliantly clean
pattern of reds, blacks, gold—
a pattern bleeding into another,
into another without end. “Will I
make it to the roadhouse
without dying tonight?” Spotting
an unraveling of the veil
of delusion, she picks beautiful silk
threads off the floor
where in desperation she knelt
to ask for help. Another weave in deep
ocean blue overlays the red,
the black, the gold. Indefinite articles
worn loosely over shoulders
could warm Caryatid to release
her boulder, to recover
her posture without a pose.
And so she does make it
to the roadhouse tonight
for a cup of hot black
light roast breathing
free—divine for now.
Siren
She wonders what song
the Sirens sang
when they lured
men to their beds
for tortured pleasure
and the prospect
of oysters
on half shells floating
in the sky at night.
She wonders if she
could hum the tune
herself (without blushing).
Travels to Saint Paul
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.
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.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 