Three turtles on the back
of a fallen wish bone
branch, I’m looking down
river
again. The chain
of lakes does not captivate.
Without an ocean,
my roots
go thirsting
for a source deep
in the mud. Home
is wherever water carries
forth that voice.
Twenty-first century letter
boxers jump the fence
into a dog park, follow
text messages on the tiniest
chance they might match up
all the clues leading them
to the diamond ring
treasure. I’m back one
and a half centuries
with Emily still writing
“my letter to the World
that never wrote to me.”
The last of the public
pay phones, a dial tone to nowhere
backwards in a dog
park is a hunt
for diamonds, is easier
for some to fathom. Me,
I don’t know how
to wear them, am seeking
other gems.
Free to walk in the rain
in a park—to imagine a dial
tone from the sole remaining
pay phone on the southeast corner
where the sun might have crept in
another afternoon. It might dry up
in time for true blues
on a plaza, for a baseball game
to play out in a new stadium
where birds get in free.
This bleeding is a reminder—
not all watermarks spring
from water, not all spills
are toxic, not all rain washes
away grit, not all words
make it to the next day. She’ll do her best
to read another message
that might hang in suspension
without slipping
out of place. She could become
in place if she refused
to grimace over outpourings.
It is by abandonment
I come to this place
of landing, this state
of delivered from evil
or angels mind. Through clouds,
descent,
the wing behind me, The City
below,
a capitalization
I won’t deny. The loss
of symmetry is
only part of the story.
Would she know
balance if
it knocked her off
this pedestrian bridge
she stands on? Closed
for repairs starting tomorrow,
it could be
another unreliable witness.
At the corner of Thomas
and Upton—a crossing that wasn’t
supposed to happen—she walks under the right canopy
of trees. A layer of fear shed, it leaves
no mark on the sidewalk.
Some spills are meant to remain
invisible to everything but the slightest breeze.
Her gifts come in crumpled
sheets, quick jottings
on the feathers of red-winged
blackbirds to pin
her heart
on her bared shoulder.
No tattoos—this is
the thing itself. Not a needle
and inked recollection of another
person or place. She’s almost ready
to ask:
Do you wish to receive?
Her full length
mirror got smashed
in the trunk
of an old black
Buick. The cheval glass
she replaces it with
trots beside her no matter
what terrain holds her
captive next. Her cat refuses
to admire himself,
or her, in it.
She wishes she had that courage.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 