“He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”
― Saint Francis of Assisi
She wants to be
the one who creates
art without using
her hands—wants to be
all heart. When she gets
what she wants, it’s time
to recalibrate
the colors—blue for logic,
green for emotion, yellow
for rigor, red
for everything else.
How many times
will he pose
for photographs before the word
simplicity
settles in? Never is a long time
to wait
for hot winds
to subside, for another image
to self-develop.
A food strike
won’t bring back
the words he lost
in mystery’s high
tide. Non-verbal
communication is
an art she hopes
to learn before nothing
washes ashore.
I remember twins
before the mall came tumbling down
(where no library would nest
in its debris). They swam
in a pool
attached to a house
my father bought
before they tore down
the family. It was broken
by the time those boys jumped
off the diving board
into lukewarm June
water. And the poodle
had already eaten the kits
nesting in a rabbit
burrow by the wooden fence.
Not tripping
under ladders, the girl
wears lips
on a t-shirt, men
block the entrance
to anywhere
she might want
to pass through
to escape hidden
meanings—but
there were none.
An old air
stream on a newly paved
driveway, a red pickup
like the one I imagined
I would own
one day. Still unlicensed
and not ready
to relinquish
sidewalks, I hug
the side of the road
and think
of the mystery
left in this escape.
A tree house built
upon itself
without a trunk
to hug. Painted white,
it becomes a crow’s
nest for spying
those moving
things in the grass. Or,
just blades
someone might make
music with—someone
who no longer lives
in the brick house
on that acre
of land missing a tree.
Someone has written
the inconvenience of death
in my handwriting
on the fence. Accidental
rhyme brings me closer
to a private hilarity. To laugh
at my own
impatience jumbled
in a dryer
with my hesitation—
would I be any
more ready?
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.
He became a doll
she left in the rain.
The way his lips
and brows faded, his eyes
continuing to stare
at the cleared morning sky,
or her when she stood
over him. She didn’t care.
And now when she does,
it’s too late. He won’t smile—
they’ll never kiss again.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 