Reclaim a shed, hitch it
by cables to the sky, spin it
around to face that northern
horizon as it becomes
enlarged by civil twilight. Use
earth to honor the earth—a dirt
laden jigsaw puzzle piece suspended
above its perfectly dug
grave speaks in monosyllables.
The greater swing risks breaking
with each arc, a bracing
hazard always worth it in the end.
My weakest hours
come too bright, too central,
too exposed—take me
to the blue hour
where I belong between
definitions.
Once the digging begins, no
reburial will do, no
wildest classroom with doors opening
onto knob and kettle will teach
away sanctity exhumed. No fire
will ruin the virgin red
pine forest for the future. Neither
deer browsing nor beavers damming
can compare to men
logging off time. As endangered
as a slender naiad or ram’s-head lady
slipper, these are words
that leave no footprint.
If she were to hide a circle
poem inside an ivy
covered tree, she might not leave
any coordinates, map, unattended
bag. She might choose the inside
of a piano for her next
cache, might decide to drop
a bomb on the destination nearest
your heart.
This cusp between
a tint and the taint
is where I’ll find you
counting strings
and deeply dug channels
before dawn ruins the light.
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
unprotected by skin.
Church Bells of an Atheist Agnostic
There’s a soaring chime
that can’t be recorded. A murder
of them takes over
the northern sky
as another day crumbles
into itself. Come again
night. More than six
of them, six beats
to a measure. A rest
is noted but not taken
till each bird has evaporated
into another winter roost.
Silver Lake on the way
to work. Is the Actor Happy
on the way home.
A black charm knocks
the train off its rails
onto a parallel ride
through some serious winter air.
En route, I
lose all ability to distinguish
between those two masks.
Deceptively simple, deceptively
broken, some collision
of Southern Gothic
with Stevie Smith’s “not waving
but drowning”—I know so little.
All I can do is keep
listening to the music. That’s what’s left
to do.
A winter’s civil twilight breaks
open a black bird swarm.
That caw commotion over church bells
reveals how little she knows.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 