An old air
stream on a newly paved
driveway, a red pickup
like the one I imagined
I would own
one day. Still unlicensed
and not ready
to relinquish
sidewalks, I hug
the side of the road
and think
of the mystery
left in this escape.
cul-de-sac
Traffic Calmer
This solstice is
a cul-de-sac.
I don’t mind losing
my way—no longer ten
miles north of Boston
wondering how houses
and whole streets
can disappear. It only gets lighter
from here, and there’s always
a way out
at that least
likely radius.
Ohio Cruising Altitude
Is this the right number
of times to have lost
myself to this sound—yours? To fly
solo over traffic
air currents low enough
to see each housing
development curl
into its cul de sac
mortal coil, to trace
each bend in the rivers between
Cincinnati and Cleveland—Little
Miami, Mohican, Cuyahoga,
Chagrin. To be high
enough to know it is possible
to survive this state
without losing my sense
of direction for the gathering
of waters. The tally stretches across
the greatest mud. Take me home.
Civil Twilight
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 