She moves not
just faster but
better when
she doesn’t know
the time. Forecasts
or predictions or
guesses or could be
wishes. A continuum
that ties her
to a fence
just like the wooden
plank one
those boys affixed
her to when
she was three. She couldn’t
tell time
then—was she free?
Within minutes
of waking, she loses
power. What gets restored
smells different
in a more constant
light. It’s here, there—observed,
or not. If she can turn herself in
to weather in all its variations,
(in)visibility, she might just fit
inside this untethered moment.
. . . do I count them
before or after
this verbal thievery? If I live
in the past, may as well revel
in this day come nightfall.
Twenty years is a long time to be
entranced by a voice. The voice. It stops
my soul from deflating
under self-reflexive pressure. The voice
that fills a dark room as if
it’s been doing it
since long before I was born. This is
the voice that invites me
to stop leaving out
the moment we’re in now. Who knew.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 