This exquisite solitude
is my ambrosia, soma, cool
breeze coaxing a hammock
on a crest overlooking
a breaking ocean.
Acquired over years
of painful resistance,
even more gruesome
dependence
on a man—any man—this pleasure
dome is equipped with a retractable roof,
an observatory
for observing the hems
of gods. Some of them slightly torn.
“I made love to her under the tarantula.”
—Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Beams and beliefs
before the bottom
fell out
and I became just
another casualty.
It’s not the fur—it’s the dander.
She knows her guardian
angel is not perfect—
those wings don’t align,
the right one is slightly
bent,
he sometimes squints
when he takes off
over the redwoods
to sail above Big Sur again.
“What is the Mississippi River?—a washed clod in the rainy night, a soft plopping from drooping Missouri banks, a dissolving, a riding of the tide down the eternal waterbed . . . down along . . . and out.”
—Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Heavy legs won’t lift
the feet so easily over
cobblestoned walkways
on the West Bank. I make believe it’s winding
north, but I’m the one
doing the twisting slowly upward. The water flows
south over falls that used to be
natural spilling below. Louisiana
steam has backwashed against the current
to fill up this Minnesota atmosphere.
It could happen. Anything is possible. Weather is everywhere—
weather is god. I am everywhere
weathering god.
This Noguchi sculpture encased
in glass on the departures level inside the San Francisco Airport soothes
my incurable longing
for what those Big Sur rocks would not release. That he could have been
my soul mate doesn’t matter—he’s been gone
since I was a young woman. That this other creator
of darkest beauty could be is
a lie I tell myself
to keep my feet from straying
off the cliff side path. I believe in
an art that mates soul to soul for a moment. And that is enough
to fly home on.
To reinstall a river
from the north
without proper execution
could dry up
hearts and drown
last ditch efforts
to believe
in the truth
about these falls.
To rent a story you can’t
call your own
is no less
an act of gossip
than the squatter’s jaw
motion on hot,
moonless nights.
Found footage, a blue filter
to distinguish night
from its counterpoint.
That these black-and-
white flicker cycles
could be finite, she’s beginning
to see how
the distinction will snap
away, all filters exposed
without purpose, no farewell
or final letter to the moon
and everything it contains. A private explosion
without a witness, her evening
will come.
Not built for long-term love
excursions, she seeks a glimmer
in a warmer gray—couldn’t
draw a picture to convey her way
through an open door.
To fiddle with a lock and swing
into a door jam
is
the extent
of her inclination
to reconfigure lines
and what might get shaded
inside. She’s not interested
in that constraint—others float
to the surface
of this potion
she may, or may not, number.
a dime on the coffee bar tile
floor to pick up, orange
traffic cones inverted
in the sidewalk to ponder. It’s a sign
not to fall
into warning funnels before predictions
of tornado sirens blare over the radio. The handsome
shop keeper who owns that caché tells me
his beautiful dog sleeps
behind the snuff
bottle case. I notice him the way I notice him
so many evenings passing each other by. I go
unnoticed. Lightning inspires
a gray afternoon sky. These things—take
note. A tornado
warning gets canceled—
but what’s that sound?
“I almost called these poems
Pickpocket Blues
because they are the repetition
by memory
of earlier poems
stolen from me
b y t w e l v e t h i e v e s.”
—Jack Kerouac, from the 2nd Chorus of “Orizaba 210 Blues” (Book of Blues)
She doubts her bones
will be put on display. Sees
how she is blessed. To be a thief
in this time is what’s left. If he channels you
to music, how will she tune in, listen,
take away what she can
to call her own? If possession
is nine tenths, she has her doubts
about the other tenth—does believe
it has something to do with the shape
of the moon and whether she bothers
to look for it each night. Did she steal
that one too?
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 