So this is the setting
of those high school days I made
you long for. This is you
at the age I was
when we met. So that was your secret
ambition. That’s your smile
before the war
bent it out of shape. So this is me
trying to make sense of the ultimate
why
our paths crossed in the exact
tangled deformation
they did.
In English. The sea is a false promise
of return,
ebb and flow,
rhythmic come and go,
the Portuguese fisherman’s saudade,
the Korean cane cutter’s han,
the American salesman building a heartland,
longing for salt and brine
he has never known.
I am the outlier
toward a route,
I am the proclivity
toward disbanding communes.
I am the lock
picked and forgotten
on the storm door,
I am longing itself
plucked and mounted
on the den wall.
I am
without heteronyms,
without Whitman,
Pessoa,
I am this plain,
unbannered song
of go-low yearning
caught inside the frame
of a habitat gone wrong.
I am fallen
winged fruit
through quilled foliage
surrounding the roots
of our tough elastic wood
into another millennium,
a clique fallen
loud and brash
without an echo.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 