No perforation in a bird safe
building. I will smash
against glass if
I’m too absorbed in calculated
thought to see what barricades me
from you. It’s a long way
from our footprints
in the sand.
Poetry
Small Stone
Some hot October
afternoon she leaves
you as abruptly as she rediscovered
your appeal. Death
doesn’t placate those of us
in the heat or near miss
lovers under any shape
moon.
Now that Your Beard Has Grown Out for Good
Superstition and grooming
don’t mix in graveyards.
Urn selection can be a fun activity
for two—no more. Decisions
made during grief
break over our heads
as lightning on a warm October night.
A thunderous silence
leaves me counting
to digits even you
hadn’t planned to touch.
Coach
To be seamless
is not a goal. I’ve got to see
how you stitched together memories
and faces and the name plates
stuck in the dirt next to those blue
flowers. Got to taste
the same kind of apple you would bite
into when we met over the lunch
period. Would dream
of the scent you gave off
when you brushed against me
after school. Top of the ninth
and your mood would be riding on that boy
on the mound—mine affixed
to you by some kind of metal
pins and rawhide twine.
Will to Resume
Time to read
a chapter in a novel, watch
a movie start
to finish (without interruption), listen
to anything but
songs from Nirvana’s Nevermind
on the radio. Time to tuck
the tributes, altered memories, grief between
pages of a journal
you’ve been rereading
(without interruption) for two months. Bible
studies will be held
on Sunday evenings in your favorite coffee house.
(He’ll still be dead.)
Those girls will continue to grow.
Sometimes leaves will turn and fall
at the same time.
Lesson Plan
If I study the word
“long” from every measured angle
I still won’t know what
you meant or felt by those right-slanting
letters. And with you
dead, those secrets will remain secure
inside a locker
I’m not meant to discover. If I do,
I‘ll pretend not to remember
the combination just so you can
teach me about numbers again—
however it is you ghosts
do that sort of thing.
The Dead Can’t Hurt
No longer in the run around, she traipses
across an invisible line
between mentor
and visitor, room
and mask, smile
and lie, tears
and truth, lover
and ghost. A new
preoccupation might not be so kind.
The Flats
If only you had come down
that warm June night.
To rescue her
from his leaping kiss, from
herself—you might have deflected
the obsession
from his visage
to yours. Might have cherished
her beautiful catastrophe
longer than
a summer’s breath. River
to lake—lake to river
bed, you might have left her
another widowed
word in the end.
Hallowed
She doesn’t visit haunted houses.
But for you she might
walk the disappearing
floor boards just to spy the illusion
of you and those insinuations
your eyes and long fingers held
captive for so many years. Creaks
expose only laughter wrapped
around the mystery
of what might have been. If
only those planks had been
longer, straighter,
of sounder wood.
After School Prey
Rabbits and voles whip
across a city sidewalk. Still,
the leaves don’t fall.
I can almost feel the heat
of your tobacco-flavored breath
against my cheek
as you whisper ghostly
nothings in my ear. Still,
the leaves don’t fall.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 