Just because she takes
pictures of snow-packed trails
with her iPhone doesn’t mean
she’s a photographer. Writing
a text to his lover
doesn’t make him
a writer. Just because
she flies
first class overseas
doesn’t mean
she’s a pilot (or
waitress in the sky). Singing
“You Sexy Thing”
in the shower doesn’t make you
a singer or rock
star I might fall in
love with. Just because
I checked out
of the Take No Heroes Hotel
doesn’t mean
it will happen again.
She waves to the engineer
as an abbreviated freight train passes by—
heading southwest. She’s running
northeast now on snow
and slush. Could be quicksand
in spots, could be something
to complain about. But
she’s already said “hi”
to a XC skier and a couple
of women with dogs. Already made it this far
nearing the north end
of Lake of the Isles
without getting frostbitten
or falling down. May as well lean
in and call it
January bliss.
Three years
and keep counting
up then down to return
to a time I still feared lighting
a match.
Flashing
red and white light
above wild clay cliffs
will fade to memory without
rescue.
Between the center two
in those chain
of lakes—a channel
becomes a fish
back with ice
floe scales fanning
and breathing
to an invisible
rhythm. Is it the wind
that whips across
unobstructed Calhoun
to get trapped
beneath the overpass?
Or, is it a boat
wake delayed
by suddenly plummeting
temperatures, eventually
rippling through? And
a quiet sloshing
against concrete embankments.
And so
as predicted
she becomes addicted
to all the drugs her body can
produce.
She doesn’t even feel it—
that bee or wasp or hornet
sting—till after she stops
running along
another urban trail. Before
the thunder
they promised. The last
of last season’s
stingers still hanging
on. When shower water
activates a sharp ping
of pain she doesn’t begrudge
the culprit. Endangered
and fading fast
is no way to live.
So the rain
listen to me
so light steady
switches to heavy
with thunder
I’ll listen to you
so it becomes logical
to become
waterlogged without
swimming a lap. So easy
to forget to pay
attention to whomever
we could be.
They are
pointless. A 20-year age
gap. Don’t label
me that other
name for puma
when I haven’t leapt
on any prey. Figures
he played
guitar in a former
life. I wrote geography
books for kids
in one of those. Scroll
into a building
on a street
in a city
of the world mapped
without any
borders beyond
those city limits. Don’t
print it—walk it
off. A 20-year
gap looks so tiny
on this hand
held device. Who
holds mine next
may not be in hiding.
Startled by the number 27
on my apartment door,
the nearest cross
street to an avenue
I used to live on. Where
did it factor
in your life
before it became
the day you died?
No reflexes can wake you
now, no tallies
too low, temperatures
too high. You used
to say time
was make believe,
manufactured to manage obsessions—
yours, mine, the rest
of the world’s. When light
rain placates a summer afternoon,
I wonder who
did the making and what
materials were used. You would
have known. Which mattered
most—the distance
you traveled or the moments
passed observed? You kept track
of both despite everything
because you knew
no other way to live.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 