At rest in a crack in the sidewalk, you
are my first outdoor capture.
It’s a digital finale
to a naturally 3D life. The green and purple
beauty of your wings
has not yet rubbed off. A flash
of rain makes me scramble
to protect my equipment. I slip
it and the figment
of you into a purse pocket
specially designed for the occasion. I can’t
help but feel like a thief in all dimensions.
A camera placed
in my hand for the first time
in as long as a road
of memory can wind
into back woods, I’m an uncertain
chronicler. Not sure how
to make a record
this way, not sure I want to
tell a story. I might prefer to steal
an image or two and retreat
to the dirt on that trail.
Flip-flopping between Kerouac,
Miller, Jeffers, Ferlinghetti, and me, she
seeks an answer
to her female question:
Why!
It’s a zigzag route—a skyway
network with real weather
leaking in. She takes it
again and again: bank
to bank, civil
dawn to civil
dusk, Atlantic
to Pacific, instrumental
to spoken
word, digital
to analog, fold-out
to GPS, root
cellar to high
rise green
roof, concave
to convex, at rest
to in motion, addiction
to rejection, black
butterfly to ancient
barnacle, female
to male—what was she thinking
asking them to ask me? She should have
left it at the river. Either side
of the falls would do.
The car with Missouri
plates parked
outside my building
is a great relief.
“I stand on my head on Desolation Peak
And see that the world is hanging
Into an ocean of endless space.”
—Jack Kerouac, from the 1st Chorus of “Desolation Blues” (Book of Blues)
Prone to motion sickness, I’ve looked
for adjustments. How to encounter the rolls
and curves without losing myself
when I have a suspicion
I should do just that. How to
accept this condition, this disease
of being human without
somersaulting over the bluff. How to drop
everything I battle gravity
over to let stillness in the center
of a wild wind be my single garment. How to be
a mammal without a thick coat
of fur. How to be upright
on two leathered feet. How? Like this:
I’ll let the blood rush
to my head without blushing.
You swim in the biggest one
of a chain
of lakes. Don’t fear
the consequences. There your head goes
popping through the surface
then bubbling back under. You
were adamant—you don’t
like the tone of Kerouac’s poems. So there you go
through water without salt,
through muck
seen and unseen. I could not be
so brave. I’d rather splash
through an ocean without narrative,
would rather let sound
carry me
than the other way around.
At their best, these
poems are little love affairs—fireflies
bursting on a night
scene to guide one solo walker
to another for a single
turn around the park
and pause before
the old iron footbridge
to witness
whatever the marsh north
and pond south
might offer up.
“I also have all space
And St Louis too
Light follows rivers
I do too
Light fades, I pass.”
—Jack Kerouac, from the 55th Chorus of “San Francisco Blues” (Book of Blues)
If this were a poker game,
I would be out
by now. I would be
reflecting on the morning
heron in the stream
between little lake
and wetland infill. Would be
a reflection
of myself on tip toes
hoping to see over
the Hennepin Avenue Bridge
rail to the pull
of the big river
as it takes all the space
it needs to spread
these northern myths
down Saint Louis way.
I would be out and free
to gamble away
another sunset.
When streaks of white
light death (instead
of frenzied fireflies)
interrupt the night
sky, who can say
which way the sun might
set in a hundred years.
Who can say this
is it, or it isn’t
the last chance
to change my mind
about those benefits offered
when only darkness remains.
I like to correspond with the dead:
Tell Emily what it’s like to be
a woman alone
in a room
in the 21st.
Ask Walt what he thinks
of the Brooklyn Bridge
127 years after
the fact. The fact is
I can write to anyone. I could
even choose to write
a letter
to you who still breathe.
* from Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 