Narratives flood the garden
of sound. Why does rocking
a cradle calm them—shake
trebling from all those voices?
She can only hear two
knocking about
in her head now.
When it comes down
to a single
deepening whisper,
she’ll know she’s arrived
home for the night.
I can almost taste
the snow—nothing
good ever comes
from that. A late March double
espresso might neutralize
the palate. Might
not. A family
reunion in August resuscitated
to honor my father. I
never went when he was
alive. How can I
go now? August is
the month of grand
gestures, spiritual releases.
August is
the month he left
us. Yes, I told him
he could let go, but
how could I know
what it would be like
to live in a world without
his heart beating
in it? August is the month
when water
falling majesty just
might return.
No one walks
this way
forever. No one waits
for the call
without some skin
crawling in
the dark. No one wishes
this on you—save
perhaps you. Save
yourself from
yourself. I would walk
that far to meet you
in the middle
where odysseys are
just stories we read
before switching off 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
protected or unprotected by skin.
Your 36th
sober birthday if
you had lived. I remember
when you told me
you put down
the bottle. I didn’t understand—
my first tipsy
only weeks before. But
that prayer
I now choke on
between “grant me”
and “the serenity”
since you died. That prayer
I thought you wrote
with your second wife. That prayer
I knew had magic
in it—hanging over
the kitchen sink
ready to help
whoever might read it
come clean. That prayer
I pin
to my heart each night
before I sleep. That prayer
enshrines every gift
you, my father,
ever gave away.
Wild winter wishes
rumble through weeds. A plain
for practicing
freedom cartwheels. Late
afternoon fog, or
are they low-lying
clouds dancing just above
freezing? No more
halo, I make my way home
without rings.
Suddenly she realizes
she’s been reading
the wrong book
and following the wrong
rules. And living in the wrong
neighborhood in the wrong
city. And working at the wrong
job and playing the wrong
piano. Wearing the wrong
smile. Loving the wrong
man. And she wonders
what’s so wrong
with wrong.
Water
pressure becomes
the source of happiness
as a broken pipe turns streets to
rivers.
To calculate the life
expectancy of a book
case, to remember terracotta
dreams, to believe
in old-fashioned raindrops,
to imagine pianos
appearing on parade
in other cities, to be
proud not to have gotten
a tattoo in this town
after all
is to be making it
up as I go along.
More than ready to close
the book
on this year. New cases bought
and assembled. Shelves and volumes
remembered, dusted, rearranged. A new order—but
too much left
unsaid. A beautiful birth, a transformative
death, I stand
somewhere between
living my life.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 