My weakest hours
come too bright, too central,
too exposed—take me
to the blue hour
where I belong between
definitions.
Poetry
Asbury Park
Your name too terrifying
to say, all those wounds
on display before there were scars.
They say you
are rescuing yourself now. But
back then you were locked
out, no one in Ocean
Grove dared to hold the key.
And I say what
difference does it make—graffiti
on a crumbling wall, the crumbling
wall to come down. What difference
now that your reconstructed
boardwalk no longer holds up
my father’s pedestrian prayers
to one hundred shades
of gray ripple and surf.
Now that he’s too far
from any water’s edge
to speak. What a difference
to see you now.
Moraine
Once the digging begins, no
reburial will do, no
wildest classroom with doors opening
onto knob and kettle will teach
away sanctity exhumed. No fire
will ruin the virgin red
pine forest for the future. Neither
deer browsing nor beavers damming
can compare to men
logging off time. As endangered
as a slender naiad or ram’s-head lady
slipper, these are words
that leave no footprint.
Another Peripatetic Day (Day 2,621)
To be in motion and
at rest over ice, to walk
and talk of the prime
mover and still not believe is
to be without
property, untaxed, free to choose
temperance or the end
of grace in fits and starts.
Dead Drop (Day 2,620)
If she were to hide a circle
poem inside an ivy
covered tree, she might not leave
any coordinates, map, unattended
bag. She might choose the inside
of a piano for her next
cache, might decide to drop
a bomb on the destination nearest
your heart.
Migration Mythology
If what I’ve heard is true, before there was an Ellis Island,
my great grandfather walked from Liberty
State Park on the Jersey side of the Hudson
to the east side of the Connecticut River
to settle into a milling
life. I can relate to that. If
what I’ve heard is not true, I can relate
to all those letterboxers who’ve lost their find count.
Peripatetic Commute
To memorize obstruction,
or just its possibility
in debris flying from men
working, hidden patches of ice
on a side street side
walk, breaks
serendipity
into slivers too thin
to support the weight
of hope, too sharp
to be ignored.
Torch Spin
A fire in the machine,
someone wants a flashlight
clean if not erased. Early
to everything, she never leaves her complete
linen stagnant, never forgets to remove lint
from communal mesh. Never
fashionable, she brings this notebook
into empty clubs. She’s never really alone—
knows her way in any kind of darkness.
Blue Hour
This cusp between
a tint and the taint
is where I’ll find you
counting strings
and deeply dug channels
before dawn ruins the light.
For Sheri on Her 45th Birthday
She cannot translate darkness
from those days when the sun only exaggerates
cold, only teases with its light. The blank
scrim separating her from us does not give forth
a familiar word or shape to fill
in with pointillist tools or hatched lines. It stares
back without a batting, no shadow limbs
to move behind it, without one
eyelash dropping free
on her cheek. She can only see as far
as it opens before her—all of a life truncated
at 22, more than twice that
number of years swinging
without interpretation. What tongue
do the dead whisper in as they do the math?
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 