A bed of pine needles
because it’s Massachusetts.
You wear a shirt studded
with diamond-shaped snaps
two nights in a row. I’ll never tell
you how I like the gray
in your beard
the way I told him never
to shave his off
30 years ago. I won’t mix
you up. The music is
immortal. The flowers he grew
were something else.
You say let’s celebrate
Columbo—not
Columbus—Day. I’ll dirty
my trench coat
for you. I could be a detective
the way I’ve perfected the stalk
without disturbing
anyone, especially the dead. I yell
at those people
who climb on the red metal
sculpture in a public garden.
It’s not a slide. I’m no grave
digger. Archaeologist—never. Who
gets to say what’s sacred or how
to achieve closure? It’s time to give
those bones a rest.
So this is the setting
of those high school days I made
you long for. This is you
at the age I was
when we met. So that was your secret
ambition. That’s your smile
before the war
bent it out of shape. So this is me
trying to make sense of the ultimate
why
our paths crossed in the exact
tangled deformation
they did.
Graffiti artists or civil
engineers leave
their mark on a sidewalk
outside an abandoned gas station. A half empty
bottle of Coors, one soaked pack
of Camels beside
your tombstone—vandals or care
takers. The golden
section, topology, a field
trip to the MIT Computation Center. Figures
may not lie, but street addresses can
disappear. What’s left is
open to interpretation.
Let’s agree to disagree
about this anger
I don’t feel. Only
those numbers in your handwriting
erased from a chalkboard
30 years ago know
how we were supposed to add up
or not. A psychology
of emotions cannot qualify
the spirit in the slate,
a song over the dugout,
stanzas hidden in the threshold
we passed through
so many times
without thinking to pause
long enough to honor the reveal.
Let this table not wobble, my coffee
not spill. Let me not offend
an old friend, remember how
to pronounce the name of your hometown
before I get there. Let it not rain
in New York City
Friday night. Let me discover alternative
spellings for closure, stop trying
to recall how you greeted and bid me
farewell—how I loved it so much
I kept it a secret
even from myself. Let me learn
how to write a grant to pay
for all this incurable longing
neither of us could afford.
Meanwhile there’s this dream
I have of you—
a card game, a maze
of corridors, fingers hidden
behind torsos, a borrowed
kiss, another kind
of numbers played here—
and the song? I wake too soon.
She tells me to locate
my anger—to let it spill
onto your grave. Lost. No belief
in the deconstruction
myth plotting out how
you hurt me. Did you? Did I
you? Were you merely a tragic hero
I fabricated to escape
the curse
of the Take No Heroes Hotel?
No matter what she says, I may just collapse
on the cold stone
and pretend to be a peony
fluttering in strange October air.
Dear Day:
This is no Dear John. I promise
to embrace your moments—to be
true. And when you expire, I’ll live
in your memory. It’s my favorite
thing to do.
I come from the other
end of autumn
where black and white
frames get mistaken
for winter. But my mother birthed four
children—one for each season
in order. My brother came last
to claim the legitimate
snow and ice. I was born to bury
leaf memory in premature white—a virgin
covering before car exhaust
gets to it.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 