In order to view this poem with the line breaks the author intended, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in landscape orientation on your phone or tablet.

Night

I’ve lived too long in the light,
looked at the sun straight on,
been a sieve for a star’s
strength pointing through me.

I’m sick of dragging shadows,
day cheeping at the sky,
palpitations, b vitamins,
the new geranium.

On our lampless street
I feel like a cricket
singing under an iris
where the street rises
to small gray hills
I can’t see.

I like feeling my hands
when it gets dark
their twin heaviness,
the distance I am from my fingers
and work. In my blindness
they ripen like desert trees
that have come up as weeds
with their wild plums.

—
Nancy Takacs is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest of which is Dearest Water (Mayapple Press, 2022). She is a recipient of The Juniper Prize, a finalist for the National Poetry Series, two 15 Bytes magazine full-length poetry awards, and other awards. She has twice been a resident fellow at Ucross. Recent publications: About Place, Kestrel, Baltimore Review, and On the Seawall. Nancy is the inaugural poet laureate of Helper — Utah’s Art Hub — and the founder and director of the Steamboat Mountain Poetry Reading Series in Helper.

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