Twenty-one-year-old
speakers and receiver and
tuner and equalizer and memory
of how I would buy
and pay anything
to get closer
to that bastard
of young
with the voice. To replace
it all now
terrifies me. The sound
of anticlimax
is lonely and loud—
the young turned
fifty years ago.
No chance for nighttime
dreaming—a neighbor’s dance
beat disruptions wreck
any hope
of true REM. Her tolerance
for talking to drunks
has diminished
over a decade in reprieve
till it’s shrunk
to the size of a single shot
of espresso
she’s going to sip
in the morning start-over.
There’s a story behind
Staten Island Ferry
orange. I can’t tell
it but can hear its tone
revealed in a soothing voice-
over through early morning fog.
Routine commuting becomes heightened
by the transcendent
moments before
the marathon begins
on the Verrazano
Narrows Bridge. By a skyline
permanently scarred, by a keel
built with steel
from collapsed towers, by film
and TV footage of our favorite
characters crossing one way
or the other. Sometimes someone
who’s had too much
winds up where he started
without getting closer
to home. Color
declares, or hides, or widens
the channel for multiple
interpretations. Always the same
orange, always the same
distance either way.
If I concentrate
on the color
I might wear
out tomorrow, I could forget
my father is
a hoarder. Even now, tubes
of ChapStick (without
microphones), rolls
of toilet paper, stacks
of Hershey bars (dark
chocolate without
nuts) surround him.
Whoever stole his stash
of words
isn’t talking.
The left hand competes
with the right
to give you the definitive
signal. Time out. No longer
a snorer. The quieter the room,
the greater the tension
of finger mirroring finger,
thumbs pressed to white.
This solstice is
a cul-de-sac.
I don’t mind losing
my way—no longer ten
miles north of Boston
wondering how houses
and whole streets
can disappear. It only gets lighter
from here, and there’s always
a way out
at that least
likely radius.
A skyway floor
tiled in original Lego
red and gray.
Another covered
in carpet patched
together with black
duct tape—I make my connections
above vehicular fray
seamlessly. New patterns
will arise if we can bounce
off the darkness
into true winter
without misfiring.
If it’s truly darkest
before the dawn and you are
on the other side waiting to be
born, I will not hang
my head low
these long nights. Will dig
a flashlight
out of a dumpster
to shine a beam
on the word
trust
before it’s too late.
“the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from “Frost at Midnight”
I get confused about red. Is it
a door, pair of jeans, or a flashing
light I want to guide me
toward the darkest day? Again, the longest night will stretch
into that moment
of optimism when all shrinking
is done and I can almost imagine
the view from the sun.
Head tilted forward,
she studies
his face, hopes
to learn how to bend
notes to put them
in a jar, poke holes
so they can breathe, warp,
turn into something
else. She’s afraid to dream
what that might be.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 