She might become a square foot
gardener. Her beds
raised and compact, she tends
to her slopes
as intensely as she used to
roll down them.
urban
How To Be Second Choice
Grace. A chess game indoors
could have been outside in
spring snow if it was
a bigger place
with more pocket parks. But here
everything stays
insulated. A punk jabbing
at the inside mechanisms
of my mind. In a dream,
the old New York employer
has all but shutdown. An empire
of books gets streamlined. Everyone
has moved
on. Even those who haven’t
when I wake will be gone.
There She Is
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.
Outside the Library
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.
Sole Cinquain
I see
urban hermits
amidst slow-moving crowds
who do not speak of loneliness
exposed.
Singles
Hubs and nests and courses
and old men fishing
in the Mississippi
too close to the urban fray
to be anything but
what they are. I’m the fringe
life centrally located. City hermits
will not unite. But on anonymous
jaunts down avenues
going north/south, we nod
as we pass one another
in steady streams.
Arrogant Cocoon
If she saw what touched
those streets, these steps
she rarely takes, that railing,
she wouldn’t leave her own
skin, wouldn’t believe
in the imagination
and its relatives, would
simply wrap herself up
till it rained.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 