Fountains spout in rain, splatter
in wind. If we had been
lovers, a bitterness would have prevailed
the way it has for all these others.
Might have been threats
left on answering machines:
“If you ever darken
my doorstep again.” Cruel
confessions: “I could see living in the City
but not with you.”
“She laughs more.”
“I don’t love you anymore.”
“I never loved you.”
“This is my O Lucky Man!
This is good-bye.”
Nothing can dismantle the purity
of a death that saves us.
I don’t believe in martyrs,
don’t always believe
my eyes. It’s the primary colors.
They endanger me
with their solid, waiverless
stairs to nowhere better
in black and white. Dirty
snow or marble, maybe
we did meet once before
this day that tips
toward the melt. What if
we were lovers? What
does that make us
now that the boisterous
hues of another summer
have bled away
their urgency? I don’t need
to teach you the difference
between complementary
and complimentary. “How lovely
you look beside me
on this wheel—that cochineal becomes you,
even against his brown,” the yellow says
to the red. I might start
to believe in plastic orange
picks scattered in the street.
And I might pick one up for you
and who you were before.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 