Diamond dust drifts
vertically through air. Sun
dogs will wag
their tails to defy
her resignation
to frown on these shrunken
days. Sixteen more
before they begin
to expand again. Who
needs a float?
Morning Poems
White Space
Time out
chairs in corners
of a widening room
beckon her to retrieve those lost
daydreams.
Runner’s High Cinquain
And so
as predicted
she becomes addicted
to all the drugs her body can
produce.
Lightning Won’t
Strike twice on
the same stage
in the same
heart to doom
the same
life all over
again. She only thinks
she recognizes
that dose
of thunder
as his.
Delicious
Pain is
a messenger
she would like
to shoot
if she had
a gun. If
she believed
in that sort
of thing. If
she had
better aim. If
she wasn’t
sometimes in
love with it—him.
Brackish
She threw
nostalgia in—
along with your initials.
“Turn all
post-war, pre-washed, personal works
over for good, or
for as long as it takes
to forget
again.”
Another message
written in poor
handwriting, stuffed
in a glass
bottle to be tossed
into another body
of water—salt or fresh,
or in between.
After the First Year
Let the counting
continue invisible. A voice
so beautiful she’s afraid
to listen for it. If it’s the best
she’ll ever hear,
what then? What key
do ghosts sing in?
12 Months
Just after midnight. Day
365. Just as time
closes the circle
tight, another one
in a parallel life
opens just a crack
to let in the light
of all the sunrises
my father did witness,
all the waves
he did hear crash
against all the shores
he claimed
with an intensity
in his eyes.
Just as I wonder
how I will see it rise
through a late August
storm, I remember
I could let go
of the immediate
future to breathe
more freely into this
slowed-down now.
I could address
my father directly,
and no one would care
if I believed
in spirits. And so
I do know
you are out there
whether I can see you
or not. This day
will break
as it will
no matter what.
In Six Days
The counting may stop,
the spinning through
a thousand seasons
in a day may
become a memory. Or,
it won’t. Who
can predict
how my feet
will move
on the island
at dawn.
Monday Mornings in August
Hurt my eyes, my bones,
those muscles with memory
make themselves
known. To wake
to news
of a dimness
that has descended
from a light that has been extinguished
permanently—what is left
to fear? He cannot die
all over again,
can he? But the pain
is real. Spasms stun
me into beginning
those stages of awareness,
grief again, out of order.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 