September rain not really falling,
but has fallen. Clouds mess
with her chance to witness
another civil
twilight. But a western gleam
signals another shift. And
she wishes she could find the hidden white
pine forest, tucked into it
creek, where she would be safe to write
his name in the needle bed
dirt without
getting found out.
But branches get so heavy
this time of year. Hotter
and hotter, later till
that moment when it gets very cool.
Either these falls are shrinking
or this river’s high.
Traffic stops
for you when you no longer trust. You’re walking
across blind
spots, a stone embankment and swerve
to tease the dead. You have predicted
you would join those left-handed ghosts
when the right of way
becomes cursed, your body,
upon impact
a weightless parcel
through early spring
air. It’s always an April day
just a half hour before
sunset—civility
in dimming lights dancing off
city streets so many miles before
the skyline disintegrates
into a watery horizon. It’s guess work,
and it’s hard to know when it will crest.
A thirty-minute measure
of time to get it done.
She must pave the road from town center
to rain puddle is a swimming hole
for her imaginary neighborhood. It’s time
to get it done. Their world, her creation,
is a cul-de-sac
of beach sand transported
by huge mechanical shovels, not
the wind. It’s time, before
she can no longer tell the difference
between the road and ditch,
to get it done. Why play
out here, her mother has asked,
when the ocean is just up the path
continuously slowly
hazarding the screened-in front
porch. But her mother just doesn’t get it.
It’s time, here in the back, to get it done. It’s not
about match box cars with real working door hinges
and tiny treaded tires. Any doll
she owns would be out of scale.
So the people of the neighborhood are invisible,
but no less in need
of roadways, driveways, articulated floor plans
for their homes. From where they live, she can’t see
East Chop or West Chop Light. But she can almost hear
the salt rumble on, miniature bay wave
tucking into itself. What gets trapped
in the air might preserve the village, or
it might rain. She doesn’t take chances—it’s time to get it done
before the bare red bulb lights up the back porch.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 