A food strike
won’t bring back
the words he lost
in mystery’s high
tide. Non-verbal
communication is
an art she hopes
to learn before nothing
washes ashore.
Civil Twilight or Dawn Poems
Vista
To laugh at serious
windows is
to forget
how I love
running on sand
dunes before dawn.
First Monday in Summer
I drink hot
coffee in the rising
heat to cool
off. It works
the way no liquid could
when I was
drunk. When I would use
any day of the week
during any season
as an excuse. But nothing
can stop me
from memorizing
the long light of now.
Resort: A Cinquain
Waiving
the right to write,
I am a silent tree
shading a racket of dreams left
behind.
Edge
No agent would help
the poet. Bottles
get flattened down to two
dimensions—a window display
for early morning
risers uncertain
about their place. Whoever
turns himself
in becomes the true
peddler of reprieve.
2012 Summer Solstice: June 20
These are
elastic skies
that won’t snap into night
before it’s time to pause under
the cusp.
June 12th
Yesterday was another
one. Twenty-one
years—but why keep
a tally? Yesterday
I heard his signature
song come tumbling out
of that Irish pub
on the mall. Part of that romance
on public transportation
series. The only kind I could know
other than this pedestrian love.
Really that’s all there is
for me not quite
half a lifetime later—so many
of the original players long gone.
Loading Dock Lost
And the quiet one
slips out and down the back
stairwell. I still take that twist
of steps myself but have forgotten
the smell of the rail
corridor. Anyone can die
at any moment. Anyone can nose
around to detect the real
me now that the smoke
has cleared. I can breathe deeply
and know there was a life—and
this is fragile.
Won’t See the Great Lake Swimmers Tonight
In her red and white
checked picnic table
cloth pattern dress
and black belt
without so many adjectives, she’s not ready
to be seen
after dark. Not ready
to see a white dwarf
star or terrorist
losing control. She is
ready, however, to witness
shifts in the weather
and small adjustments
to the rock garden
behind the row house
where she used to live.
Scratch
If blank walls are criminal, he’ll obey
the law with a spray can
till he needs a place to sleep. Till walls
become doors that open
onto back alleys
where the sun can’t get in. The spoon
he bends tonight
will be the surface he refuses
to touch at civil dawn. Six degrees
below without hope of a single aubade.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 