“Lap and drag. Crag and gleam.
That continual work of wave
And tide, like a wet wind, blowing
The earth down to nothing.”
—Tracy K. Smith, from “Minister of Saudade” (in Duende)
When laws of motion become lairs,
it’s time to reconsider the quarry
and what it might hold. She stopped
buying bathing suits when she learned
the truth about limits. Love
lies at the bottom
of the bottomless. There she’ll be—
denying her need
for oxygen. Not a little death.
Not a death at all.
She walks the long way
around building façade
restoration scaffolding.
In this wind and light
rain, weather is no longer
superstition. Weather is
serendipity. When libraries become
verbs, new subjects will appear and succumb
to a state of being
searchable. And she’ll brush
the leftover syllables
into the gutter
for another Friday.
A disembodied voice
goes silent
while the body flees
to another scene. Another season
to test out microphones
for the soul. No one calls
for the ombudsman
in this crowd. Every form
and structure gets
a say. What gets
heard is news
for another night.
Whoever can write
about home on demand
has never been challenged
by the prospect of losing
its meaning. The place where I was born
holds no promise
of belonging. Have seen it
once since I left at six
months. Where I met my husband
means nothing because
there is no husband. If home is
where you hang
yourself, I can almost call this town
on the Mississippi the place. Almost. But
what about The City? The Atlantic Ocean?
It could be where you build
your own Take No Heroes Hotel
from some abandoned structure
with former lives peaking through.
And this white shirt
with stick figure faces
wrapping around the sleeves
could only be an icebreaker
in an early morning
dream. Your mother says
I need a man’s opinion. I say,
remember the dilapidated white house
with that front porch reduced
to a stoop where your sister lived
her first year of college? That’s how
you know me—I lived there
too. And now (because it’s one
of those unfolding at civil
dawn) your mother drives us
to a farmstead you recognize. I don’t.
A few thousand miles west
of that house. You’re someone’s brother
and still
you rest your hand
over mine as if
to say it’s going to be
okay. I wake before I can
reply, how do you know.
AKA is not FKA is
not who she thinks
you are. How to feel saudade
about the name
of a place, not the place
itself. She wonders if
we are what we eat
on the way to choosing the one
that will stick.
Not ready for the flash
mob to erase her
memory of him. Or
his name. She confesses
to her Connecticut days
and nights. No one
will recognize her
in this white tee, black
hoody, blue jeans, white
sneakers. She could—and
she will—take
another route home.
She follows the river
north. A rail bridge
that goes both ways
conceals the inevitable.
If she hires you
to photograph the real
landscape of her dreams,
be prepared. She’ll expect
a train
on each horizon.
When emails
become too transparent, coffee
bars too communal, the cathedral
steps too shallow,
she’ll stop
this conversation
to honor stray rooftops.
That ballerina on the back
of a bus, inventions
to relieve
sinus pressure before
all the trees
bloom. For the one who walks
alongside—wild
flowers mostly. And rants the color
of wisteria
early on.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 