What’s left of her
independence could be lost
on those leaves budding
too early
to be in tune. Survival
of the opportunistic—the fittest
in a fancy new suit. Who
would wear a dress,
a tie, to a basement
house party where the pipes
might be about to burst? This leather
jacket has no secrets to hide
yet. Will there be time? Tornadoes
can’t destroy the true wall
where faces and signatures
are faint but there, if
you study the brick
long enough and in the right light.
After all these years, all
you have said, you’re still
afraid
of him. He has only a few
words left. They won’t hurt. Rarely did.
It was the ones
he threw at those around you.
To be so privileged
can be a burden. In his weakened
state, new hip just beginning to settle
into the mechanism that is
what’s left
of his life, why
this fear? Yes,
you’re losing him
the way we all lose
one another. There are no guarantees,
no ultimate reprieves. This is a slow burn
singe around your original
edges. No way comes without terror.
Whose? Yours? His?
All of those others?
With the spoken
language disintegrated,
what’s left is this raw
love. You must look it
in the eye. Don’t turn
your head off his
steady gaze. Remember,
who he is.
White, unadorned silk,
her obsession is showing.
How much depends on
how closely you look. If
you comment on it, she may reply:
Oh, it’s supposed to.
That’s the style
as is this gray hair.
We didn’t know. How
could we? I could be
in the midst
of another halo
shadow over hours
untold. Could be
at the nudge
and pause as they ripen
inside a green house
beneath a green roof.
His lips could be
ready, and I would be unpainted
and preoccupied
with this spot on a Formica
table top. An imaginary island
in an imaginary sea.
To be
so colorless
and rhyme blind to the paint
used to cover the bark side is
my song.
A forest-killing nightmare, a daydreamer rocks
to 70s radio hits on a black-and-white
checked basement couch. Not ready
to face the daylight pocketed
on a patch of carpet a floor above
her head. It’s the smart
(ass) ones she goes after with a gossamer twined
web she spits into those pipes
running along the ceiling. It doesn’t always stick.
Volcanic ash washes
over Europe. The Internet comes
crashing around
our ankles. I smell a generator
run off
at the mouth. And my jaw
aches for a bearing
down closer to where
you might have placed
your tongue
for a measure.
As I become a lake
in a river, I narrow
my view to lines broken
by bridges, galvanized
steel spider
webs over my head.
I would forget the Liffey,
Erie Canal, pomegranate
seeds tucked inside a secret
pocket of stolen narration.
Would recall another Retreat
Drive and wish
to be remembered
for the scent of rosewater,
not the words I couldn’t
say slowly enough
to make you pause.
Some days she’s not willing
to dig deep
below a scratched surface
truth. Some days she just wants
to see her
reflection crack
and walk on. Some
other days that become nights
she would rather go
blind than acknowledge
the visions trapping
her heart inside an under river
tunnel. This could be
one of those.
This date cannot take me away
from you the way
I almost succeeded in making it
work for me years ago. Got it wrong.
The clouds won’t break
this afternoon. Learning
to walk again, you can rest
your eyes in this patch
of gray. I may escape on foot
for a moment. I will return
to the day breathing
in relief—a sculpture
breaks free of its artist’s grip.
I’m a step outside
Rodin’s Caryatid. I’m climbing
outside someone else’s
imagination working on a dream
where no one has to say
anything. Let those words he says
will never die expire.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 