a solitary woman
in an Edward Hopper painting. A silhouette
on an empty
bed, she gazes out an open
window in a New York City
five-story, walk-up. Hair pulled
into a dancer’s bun, dressed
in a pale peach nightgown. Bare
thighs—this is not
loneliness. She becomes
in awe
of herself
and the world
in early morning.
A patriotism
I did not inherit. Along Asbury
Park’s Main Street
heading toward the shore—the last one
we watched together. Tears
came to his eyes when bagpipers marched
past in their wool kilts. Their drone
pipes in near perfect harmony. Fireworks
have frightened me since dodging
M-80s in the Paris metro
on Bastille Day,
then in the New York subway
every 4th of July
for years. I could never keep step
with a group. Always got the incurable urge
to cross the street
in the midst of it all
against the flow. But now
that he’ll watch no more
parades, a single bagpipe
opening wide those first notes
to “Amazing Grace”
is a freeze
tag tap I cannot ignore.
I am New England dirt,
the taste of beets out back.
I am not brownstone—
not urban by birth. I am
still in quarry depth,
the scent of cars rusting beneath.
I am not ocher—not red
iron ore impure. I am sipping
fresh water from a claw-foot tub
turned spring, overflowing
to Bone Lake at dusk
and warm. But I am not
the moon to be collected.
I am not forty jokes memorized—
not working a room,
timing accent and plot. I am
ready to mark this laughter
the colors of a flower bed
against brick. I am the line
drawn purple—blues and reds
of a road map
preparing to fold everything
I am
(except magnetic north) in place.
I’m the one he made first. Still leaning
against an unpainted wall and unstrung
in his mind. Far
from perfect, my curves are a first try. But
he finished me
well. And I’m a hit
at campfires deep
in eastern New York forests.
She can catch the train
at the next station down
the line. Still sit forward
and watch future
vistas become now.
A national cemetery with endless
rows of evenly spaced
headstones. The mother’s there
and the father she never knew. But
not the son.
She pitches pennies
on the floor in the back
of a New York taxi cab
with twins
she used to know. Thirty-five
years. Nap dreams mean
nothing unless she chooses
to shape them
into visions to augment
the afternoon light.
She’s not going to
google those boys—
learned her lesson.
She doesn’t want to kill
off any more of her past
sooner than it needs to expire.
The crumbs
she brushes off
the table will become
the place
she dreams
of reaching by train
before civil dawn. And
the rhythm
she feels
will overpower anything
any one
of us might hear.
The flight across pre-spring
parkland on a hot March
morning, or the sinking
to the bottom
of the Atlantic. Pinging
back and forth between
ocean and river, bicycle
wheel and open
window won’t revive
verbs that prefer
to remain dead.
A walk on the just opened stretch
of High Line is hardly
the wild side. If this is my lizard
brain jotting down
these notes, I may as well slam
back another mug
of black coffee, check the time
on my cell every ten
minutes, keep walking
into fragmented images,
unconscious hues
of primitive thought. I’ll stick out
a forked tongue to hail
a cab for the memory
of other rides and rest
stops to be secured.
One hundred Bronx trees can speak
along the Grand Concourse. She wants to believe
they’ll speak
without the drink, will be interactive, won’t tumble
into monologues
with the arrogance to think
they are so different. She’s going to continue
to listen for them through light
rain and substantial winds. The stories they will tell.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 