Tonight
Noguchi saves
all of us from those fears
we nourish in our souls before
morning.
Isamu Noguchi
Pacific Saudade
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.
Letter in a Mirror
“Tainted Love” won’t hit you
the way it did in 1982 when you came late
to Studio 54. Always arriving early,
you miss being
the impact. Pregnant
new wave singers, punk
ones already overdosed, your phobia
keeps you clean. You are one
of the dirt eaters. We can tell
by the lines on your finger
nails, by the look you give
trees. Your envy is not pretty—
it’s what you wear
when nothing else seems to fit. The seam
is endless
around your assumptions.
Your shoe size is not
what you or I think. You would be taller
if you could give up
the memory of those songs—
the ones that didn’t deliver
the truth, it turns out. And it is
this—Noguchi is dead. Your soul mate
isn’t yet born. Take a deep breath,
my dear woman, move on.
Living Tower
Even if it was an option, it’s not
an option
to date your guardian angel,
even an accidental one. You may believe
you’ve exhausted them all, been pushed
to the edge of the jetty—rocks everywhere
sounding off a raucous
laugh. But the one who guides you ashore
cannot be the one to take you
home
to love you in a half lit, half
darkened solar. This is more
than semantics. This is
a rule bronzed and embedded
in each Noguchi sculpture
you hope to see and know you’ll want
to touch.
Illumination Night
Summer ignites itself
Methodist style. Japanese
paper lanterns Noguchi might have made
for Martha Graham’s last dance
alight the campgrounds, set the island aglow
in pinks, oranges, yellows, fire-engine
red awash. A crowd gathers to mingle, a child
may wander tonight
in wonder the way gingerbread
cottages welcome her to their wooden railed porches, dare her
to touch the gossamer skin
on their handmade firefly swarm, cracking paint on their rainbow eaves, beckon
an unconscious desire to trace a piece
of island history with fingertips. Her grip on home
rice paper thin, she wants to believe
her step across these wooden planks will never end. But
as she witnesses this blaze of an island blasting its last August
shouts before a decrescendo toward an autumn whisper
few hear, fewer comprehend, she knows she must relinquish
the island to return it to those who find
illumination into night without
a lantern, without a tabernacle song.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 