Do your trills go up
or down, do you believe
in urban tornadoes, ending
on an odd number? Are you defined
by your questions, or do you answer
to a straight line? I wouldn’t
want to live in a world
with only multiple choice, without
adaptation, where streets are
always plumb with rivers
that take us home.
On the Third Avenue Bridge
over the only spot
where river flow can still be
seen, I let go
of the last trace
of your voice—recording
of how I don’t want
to remember you
erased. What’s left
are those moments
I could see you
still moving. Those falls
rush on a relentless
industrial music.
This Wuthering Heights morning
will give way to nothing
more than a Kentucky afternoon
into a Mississippi River night. Ice
dams and avalanches
and floods—let them be.
What will be will be
on moor, in prohibition speak
easy cave, under Prairie
School eave overnight.
Light is a memory
of itself by the time
it messes with her
view to cast this shadow
in triplicate. Her hand moves
across a flat whiteness,
her fingers navigate
the journey to this wall
edge—one no descending
darkness can erase.
Four children four
seasons—does it begin
with spring or winter?
It all depends—
whether we are dormant
before we live, whether
we can begin again, whether
autumn counts at all.
Ink smears over knuckles,
a left-hander drags
her thoughts through the past.
No moment
is left clean.
Bus stops disappear
into the sides
of mountains—snow
and ice, call 311 on a cell,
before climbing to the top
of insignificance.
The ideas we trouble
today become the ghosts
in our machines
tonight. That I judge
you the way you
me is our modern dance
so gravity laden
the ballet has become
extinct. In my wild
dreams about uncovering
empathy with swans,
sea otters, I am
the untroubled one, you
the same who floats
beside me on this channel surface.
this day? It will not wake up
more than a dull white
of clouds and snow—an ash
missing a few waves. Must make
do with light tricks
weeks before winter. Find a way
to harness the energy
it will take to break
open the hours
to unclutter fear
from the walk.
—sounds female—who
commands my attention
the way the dead
vines outside my window attract
hearty northern birds
and squirrels to the rummage,
demand that my indoor cat take
his instinctive position as hunter?
A stillness so loud
it wakes the early winter
in me to watch. Who?
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 