Gray explosions
on white on
a shower
curtain say more
than a rainbow
garden of stripes
or petals or
letters of an alphabet
gone mad. And
the red
towel hanging
over the bar
becomes the doorway
to fabric tunes
in motion. Splat
ball in a claw
foot tub might sound
like this.
And the old floating
bridge moans
as the cattails
whistle and she nods
to the fish
in the pond below. And
urban nature’s
reach rescues
her once again
from herself.
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.
Temp drops
a natural spritz
darkens the sidewalk. Hail
pounds down
crops. Buzz
used to be
the sound of bees—but
where are they, where
are we now?
Nobody would mistake
a runner’s
log for poetry. No true
run could be
anything less. Or honest
obsession begin
any way other than head
first into the deep
end of risk
and nostalgia. I am
nobody waiting
to meet you
again. Then again
who am I
to be so mistaken
by fresh water
over warped notes?
The truth—
diplomatic
delivery gets you
nowhere near humility’s true
timbre.
Twenty years ago
social and media did not slow
dance together. We lived
two blocks apart and wrote
letters to each other—sometimes typed,
sometimes handwritten
on the back
of band flyers. Rode bicycles separately
to meet at civil twilight
beside a bench
on the west side of the lake. Carved
our initials into its weather-softened wood
back. Rain could not erase
the way we believed
we could entwine ourselves
into a protective web
to keep echoes of residual melancholy
at bay. That was the summer I became
precious cargo. I hear you are
a happy man now—and I still refuse
to dust corners or become graffiti.
Weeping
becomes her salve
addiction not to cure
her gift to you and all those gone
before
don’t deserve to be
preserved. Sometimes
a smile is too
precious, a phrase too
slippery, a mirror
too polished, room
too clean, dog
too calm, child too
still, a bird
too blue. I might be
the street that got too
wide. But no tree
could ever be
too tall.
Today slate,
tomorrow lapis
lazuli, tonight
a batting between.
She’ll never see
the world through the eyes
of stars. A blue moon
would be her waltz
to summer night
swoons. And that’s new
wave enough.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 