This is no Big Sur, Dingle
Peninsula, Wasque—
this is somewhere
in the middle. A river
that has starred
as the main character
in novels, caused cities to be
built, become a final stop
for the tormented
and despairing. It is a river
that should be frozen
by now. That only its fringes
cutting against its banks
are covered in a thin sheet
of ice is another story
that needs to be
told. And I’m no narrator
for the fresh or salt.
November mist nowhere
near any Big Sur perch.
This morning might give
way to snow or
nothing at all. I might give
in to references
to vertical transport or
stand on the ground
floor and celebrate
these wooden stairs.
She believes the dirt
can talk, trees and wind join in—this nonverbal
world says more to her
than the one she keeps trying to define
and confine herself to. Poetry
of numbers in vibration is
music. She sees the face
of a god over Big Sur cliffs—sand mixed in.
Vital signs appear in all directions—here
the universal symbol
for no longer choking. The color blue
has turned green
as mature redwood leaves
modest in their fog shroud.
She remembers how
to read them only when she steals
a moment from leaf litter beds
to refocus her mind
on what her eyes have been fixing
all along—this figure eight.
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.
Cold trapped beneath
redwoods outside
the Henry Miller Memorial
Library doesn’t deter me
from standing against evening grain
to see you straight
ahead performing. I know that sound
of aching beauty won’t last. I only wish
those graceful branches could
suspend
the deep wails
from your blues harp the way
these trees, those mountains, the rocks, that ocean hold
steady. You pack up
your guitars and you’re gone
down Highway One. I don’t see you
drive away, but I know
I can feel the air stir
from notes dropping
around substantial roots.
How to memorize a place
like Big Sur
without becoming a thief
is a mystery no cabin
key with a plastic Holiday Inn
shaped tab can slide into, let alone
unlock. It hurts
to witness this dangerous
beauty’s power to break into
the securely fastened chamber
of emotion inside
me. It’s not the dilemma
of choosing to die by a roadside
snake bite or by becoming roadkill
under the wheels
of a musician who never was your lover’s van.
It’s not a choice. The white line will crop the shoulder
how it will at the most substantial curves
in the two lane highway. And I won’t remember
when they come—so busy trying to commit
the impossible reality
of rock and wave and height and crash
to a memory that cannot be
committed. And I could be
in my wobbly attempt.
Across Highway One
from where I slept, from where a hummingbird swept
into the brush to alert me to another
day, I wait.
Fog never fully rolls back to reveal
those mountaintops but allows the sun to be exposed
and exposing
as hours progress. Seams between
sky, ocean, cliff
recede. I’m not waiting—I’m opening receptacles
to turn-outs and drop-offs and rock-ons.
This Noguchi sculpture encased
in glass on the departures level inside the San Francisco Airport soothes
my incurable longing
for what those Big Sur rocks would not release. That he could have been
my soul mate doesn’t matter—he’s been gone
since I was a young woman. That this other creator
of darkest beauty could be is
a lie I tell myself
to keep my feet from straying
off the cliff side path. I believe in
an art that mates soul to soul for a moment. And that is enough
to fly home on.
“Waiting like a longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman in a serious room.”
—Jack Kerouac, On the Road
She who passes
the art test will be cursed
with elongated worry—the weight
of aluminum confused
with its atomic
number 13. She never believed
a number could sink her
dream. Has not encountered quick
sand, is not willing to take
the risk. She takes high
bridges over vehicles to knock
the wind from her diaphragm
of fear, pauses abnormally long
before crossing
any street. Then she runs a quick
rodent race across, laughing
all the way
at herself. She knows how
to do that—has been
doing it for years.
Even as she prepares her face
for that stranger she believes
would catch her before
she spilled over a cliff,
she giggles at the distortion
in the mirror.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 