So afraid
of needles, she refuses
the vaccine that might protect her
from the thing
she fears
(and desires) most.
She’s still willing
to risk the damage
from a crash
so beautifully choreographed
and strummed. Still
believes in Coleridge
and his “willing suspension
of disbelief.”
Night collapses
into day—the ferry
is free. A frame
for this lake
sky after a May frost
would cost more
than all the gold
in a guardian angel’s halo,
could not capture
the moment I choose
to turn fully around.
You make my hair curl
around a yearning
for a straighter path. Deep beneath
the streets you go
to rescue these roots
from those utilities. The rinse is never
final. Four men in suits cross over
without looking
in both our directions. They don’t
believe in rain. You aren’t to be believed—
weather becomes an emotion
under your care.
Farmers market stalls
in newly arrived cold. She would crawl
into a Silva
Cell to live among the roots
she never got to touch before going
to hell and back
with a pail of structural soil. Would step
over pervious
pavers to catch even a glimpse of you
conversing with a large red
oak before another civil twilight breaks
apart light.
Into that laughter she takes
a wrong turn, lands
outside a stone
wall where vines bare
their veins. The host separates
direct light from parallel lines
across
wind-stirred dirt. She picks it up
at the last possible moment
before rain drowns out sound.
Going it alone for so long,
she forgets how
to talk to others
after dark. Black hollow platform
shoes and a red dress. Her pocket pal—
a thin blank
book without lines—keeps her
company while she waits
for her light to change.
I am urban
wildlife found in grain elevator
yards abandoned
then reclaimed. I emerge
from sewers with pride.
I’m not afraid
of you. Fly at you
on crowded sidewalks. Swim
beneath barges, sleep in the hollow
of your stoop. Nest
in your overhang. I am
no different from you.
Oh, hyacinth.
And a strip of lilac
cement above a grid
of characterless windows.
She questions
why
a shed needs decorating.
Show me your beams,
my bones, instead.
What a privilege to be
in a booth by herself. What a message
to send in a bottle
filled with air. What a color
to believe in
when the photo turns
out dark. What eyes
to feel upon her. What a shock
to see boxers on a large screen
TV behind the bar. What
a relief not to be teetering
on the edge
of a wooden floor. What a sound
her heart makes
when she recognizes how long
it’s been since she needed
to identify the name of a cocktail—ingredients
weighing her down
cellar steps to irrelevance.
A group chant in the back room. Espresso
machines hiss
in the main. The chanters clap. I may
know the words but I drink
the standard drip black
up here with coffee
jerks. I was no mixologist. Sometimes
it still hurts to mingle.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 