Beautiful to watch
from a well-sealed
window. Nothing
gets taken
for granted. Feels like
a drop
in ambient thought.
The essential reveals
itself against a pale blue
cloudless sky. Another day
where hope just might burst
through burns awake
to break convection’s hold.
for Sheri
She knows every inch of the dock,
every splinter, barnacle,
hurricane seam.
It is not a plank.
It is just where she walks.
And she knows how to dive,
has been doing it for years.
No easing shore side
into the wash for her,
she plunges in and is “used to it”
before others wake.
This is underworld—closets,
caves, roads, the drag
of undertow. This is where she should
live, she who in her heart is a sponge
is a sponge is a sponge.
It is laying out to dry,
the exposure to air,
the rising sun. It is her death
to be before all of you. In performance,
she will never work a room,
works the ocean floor
for all it’s worth.
Leave her uncontained. She would rather
paint kisses—watercolor running—
than be confounded by a mirage of roses
she cannot reach, without a body
protected or unprotected by skin.
Your 36th
sober birthday if
you had lived. I remember
when you told me
you put down
the bottle. I didn’t understand—
my first tipsy
only weeks before. But
that prayer
I now choke on
between “grant me”
and “the serenity”
since you died. That prayer
I thought you wrote
with your second wife. That prayer
I knew had magic
in it—hanging over
the kitchen sink
ready to help
whoever might read it
come clean. That prayer
I pin
to my heart each night
before I sleep. That prayer
enshrines every gift
you, my father,
ever gave away.
Wild winter wishes
rumble through weeds. A plain
for practicing
freedom cartwheels. Late
afternoon fog, or
are they low-lying
clouds dancing just above
freezing? No more
halo, I make my way home
without rings.
Suddenly she realizes
she’s been reading
the wrong book
and following the wrong
rules. And living in the wrong
neighborhood in the wrong
city. And working at the wrong
job and playing the wrong
piano. Wearing the wrong
smile. Loving the wrong
man. And she wonders
what’s so wrong
with wrong.
More than ready to close
the book
on this year. New cases bought
and assembled. Shelves and volumes
remembered, dusted, rearranged. A new order—but
too much left
unsaid. A beautiful birth, a transformative
death, I stand
somewhere between
living my life.
The dullness
of this count does not mirror
the flash
of metal that cuts longing
into irregular slices
of grief.
No steady hand
can regulate how
it gets measured, how
another day will fold
open with his absence
now ink
that has set into the fibers—
bleeds and all.
Why count the piled-up
hours of grief? As I get closer
to our number 8—
another day
in the last month
of a depleted year—
I realize even tipped
on its side,
its resemblance
to infinity
is a mirage. Even 8
is not immortal.
The labor of breathing
without gasping
through these hollowed-out
days. The fear
of never being able
to recite the Serenity Prayer
again because of the way
the throat closes shut
before “grant me”
can escape. Just one more
bear hug, one more laugh
over lost cookies, one more
email exchange, just one
more hand squeezing, one
more simultaneous gazing
at the same full moon
while standing thousands of miles
apart, one more walk
side by side
would not be enough.
I surrender to this
grief and put my trust
in the wind still blowing
from those resilient wings.
Death’s got nothing
on them.
On this
election day
I break the golden rule
that poetry and politics
don’t mix.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 