Twenty-one-year-old
speakers and receiver and
tuner and equalizer and memory
of how I would buy
and pay anything
to get closer
to that bastard
of young
with the voice. To replace
it all now
terrifies me. The sound
of anticlimax
is lonely and loud—
the young turned
fifty years ago.
Do they remember
months after the solstice? Who
will speak
for you tomorrow morning
before strange fog
clears? Tonight this parade
answers no questions.
Dear Day:
This is no Dear John. I promise
to embrace your moments—to be
true. And when you expire, I’ll live
in your memory. It’s my favorite
thing to do.
I enter the quiet
life through a seam
in this wall. First time I heard
your voice was a homecoming. Tell me
if ghosts speak. With a pronounced
accent? Is the language
of flowers reserved for them
the way I’ve reserved myself
for what’s left
of you? Memory is seamless.
When this conversion is complete, I will
no longer be compatible
with myself and all
I said and didn’t
repeat. I will become a new country
where roads are paved for pedestrians only. Not
an aside. Center walks will encircle
the island—bridges dismantled, memories
beside the point.
“Their whistles weird shadows of sound.”
—Sara Teasdale, from “From the Woolworth Tower”
Paint her as a child
on the one that crosses
Vineyard Sound. Forget to warn him
when the whistle blows
above his always lilting
head. Impress upon those who might
refuse to reflect on anything
more than a moment
old that memory comes with the package—
stories stored and ripe
for a dusting off
embellishment. Liars and thieves
in the best sense of those words—
weird and sound.
Light is a memory
of itself by the time
it messes with her
view to cast this shadow
in triplicate. Her hand moves
across a flat whiteness,
her fingers navigate
the journey to this wall
edge—one no descending
darkness can erase.
The crossing goes by
too fast, the span
and stretch will remain imprinted
on my memory reel as long as
they do. Who’s to say
I will carry this one
with me longer than any other bridge
I’ve committed
to memory. Part of the collection
of true spectaculars, it stands
a chance of rising
often and with force.
All the beautiful
moments have been taken.
What’s left
in my releasing
hands is this—
truthful seep into the less
elastic skin of memory.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 