Field Guide to the Night Sky — Blackbird Archive

← v5n1, Spring 2006

No one witnesses

the history of light.

The sky litters itself

with dust and I’m unsettled

by the steadfast burn

of thinking.

The night sky reaches

inside me,

I am sleepless

waiting for each star

to cross

into its corner, flower

then dim.

I do not believe

in paradise:

to flower, then dim.

nature spirituality solitude

Jennifer Chang

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008), and her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Nation, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere . She cochairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the support and promotion of Asian American poetry, and was recently named a contributing editor to Shenandoah . Beginning Fall 2011, Chang will be an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Bowling Green State University. Photo by Evan Rhodes, 2010