You could play guitar inside
a carved out amphitheater
within a grain silo. The notes
that get trapped inside
honeycomb pockets
would resonate all the truer
a roots sound with the memory
of wheat protecting them.
I would stand
a perpetual ovation
in my red steel balcony—an intervention
that gets results.
From sand dunes to glass
bottles, mushrooms, and gangsters
in three easy steps. Discover
the silica potential, carve
out caves for mining, harvest
the goods
and bad and everything
in between. Dank
and delicious, history is ripe
for the stealing. It’s what I do.
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.
The clank of faux
pearl snaps on sleeve cuffs
against table top formica,
a message seeps
through wine patches
in the shirt plaid—
not long now, this leg
is coming
to an end. Time
to leave lipstick on another
mug and pull a black velvet coat
over shoulders before breezes
become extinct
for eight more, gusts
take over the glorious
hurl forward.
It could be tattoos and piercings offered
in the old rail shed behind a grain
elevator that still groans and gives
forth. Could be barges propelled up river
to unwrap another image thrown
back in time. Or a black and burnished
brass Roman Candlestick
telephone and century turning pipe
organ in history’s hotel
parlor. If only my mother were here—
she would know what to do.
If science is fiction, let no oil
touch her skin under any narrative
current. A miracle
of protection, it remains dry
over a lifetime submerged
in water. She clings
to kelp forests. Air
bubbles are necessary.
She stands beside the wooden no wake
sign to calm those rumblings
inside, steps on a bed of soft,
overripe crabapples
by accident. Laughter
in the slippage. She’s been to the island no state
wishes to claim across the channel—prefers
it from this side. Terror is
a walk across the High Bridge that ties
Minnesota and Wisconsin together
along Highway 63. A club soda to gulp
in the Harbor Bar outside wooded campgrounds.
Yes, vista rather than destination.
To be plum
with the river, or a bluff
quarried but still projecting
as a barn for the gods,
is
to be at all
bliss on a high bridge
or barge passing beneath.
“He was BEAT—the root, the soul of Beatific. What was he knowing?”
—Jack Kerouac, On the Road
She packs up her traveling self again, seeks
a lightened load for a one night stand
beside the river and its Red Wing rumblings.
Any way to break
the ceramic cast
to her routine deserves a look. This romantic getaway
has room for only one
on the upper deck of the Empire Builder. First stop
and she’s off
tracks on the trail toward bluffs ahead.
When she who is a cowlick
becomes a main character in high anxiety
drama playing through intersections, it’s time
to remove all straight lines, time
to take the long way home on foot.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 