In my dream the dead console
the living about others
who may have died. Rumors
turn a 60s ranch brick house
into a warren of hidden
phobias—a different one
for each room. Fear of
wool, not cotton wool, brings her
to the farthest corner
of the cellar where a sneeze
is just a sneeze. And it is you,
my dear friend, who are really gone.
That other friend left
my life but lives on
in another warren on another island
with his superconductors and scattering waves.
Startled by the number 27
on my apartment door,
the nearest cross
street to an avenue
I used to live on. Where
did it factor
in your life
before it became
the day you died?
No reflexes can wake you
now, no tallies
too low, temperatures
too high. You used
to say time
was make believe,
manufactured to manage obsessions—
yours, mine, the rest
of the world’s. When light
rain placates a summer afternoon,
I wonder who
did the making and what
materials were used. You would
have known. Which mattered
most—the distance
you traveled or the moments
passed observed? You kept track
of both despite everything
because you knew
no other way to live.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 