When she can’t remember what
she wrote
down yesterday, or
last night. When the lyrics
to an old favorite
taste funny
in her mouth. When
she turns left
instead of right to encounter
a street she hasn’t explored
in decades. Gets on a train
and gets off
in a town
she’s never heard of. And
the week feels eight
days long. And the quiet
in her head
alarms her. Then she turns
up the volume
to expose
a new silence
and words almost lost.
The truth
about the bumbershoot. Without
an accent. Rain
won’t fall yet. Another Cessna
Citation will land before
it does. Just one more thumbprint
and the walls
will be done.
The truth—
diplomatic
delivery gets you
nowhere near humility’s true
timbre.
Twenty years ago
social and media did not slow
dance together. We lived
two blocks apart and wrote
letters to each other—sometimes typed,
sometimes handwritten
on the back
of band flyers. Rode bicycles separately
to meet at civil twilight
beside a bench
on the west side of the lake. Carved
our initials into its weather-softened wood
back. Rain could not erase
the way we believed
we could entwine ourselves
into a protective web
to keep echoes of residual melancholy
at bay. That was the summer I became
precious cargo. I hear you are
a happy man now—and I still refuse
to dust corners or become graffiti.
Weeping
becomes her salve
addiction not to cure
her gift to you and all those gone
before
A patriotism
I did not inherit. Along Asbury
Park’s Main Street
heading toward the shore—the last one
we watched together. Tears
came to his eyes when bagpipers marched
past in their wool kilts. Their drone
pipes in near perfect harmony. Fireworks
have frightened me since dodging
M-80s in the Paris metro
on Bastille Day,
then in the New York subway
every 4th of July
for years. I could never keep step
with a group. Always got the incurable urge
to cross the street
in the midst of it all
against the flow. But now
that he’ll watch no more
parades, a single bagpipe
opening wide those first notes
to “Amazing Grace”
is a freeze
tag tap I cannot ignore.
don’t deserve to be
preserved. Sometimes
a smile is too
precious, a phrase too
slippery, a mirror
too polished, room
too clean, dog
too calm, child too
still, a bird
too blue. I might be
the street that got too
wide. But no tree
could ever be
too tall.
Today slate,
tomorrow lapis
lazuli, tonight
a batting between.
She’ll never see
the world through the eyes
of stars. A blue moon
would be her waltz
to summer night
swoons. And that’s new
wave enough.
Multicolored book
trucks still roll
into view. She muzzles
herself as she drifts
to a one-room
library circa 1970. Rain dazzles
the surface
of the island. The scent
of Mylar, settled-in
type, a lilac
perfume on the librarian
who reads
Blueberries for Sal
to a circle
of restless children. Next stop,
next town, the Flying Horses
to ring themselves off.
Then it fades away.
Another 27th day hits
the way heat slaps
my face when I leave
an air-conditioned
shell. He would have walked
in it—no matter
what. I mention an MIT cap
and ring to a young architect
who knows
the Institute well. He says
as much as it changes
it remains the same. My father
faced change,
loved the same.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 