Arctic Night, Lights Across the Sky

by Linda Hogan

We are curved together,
body to body, cell to cell,
arm over another.
The world is the bed for the cold night,
one cat curled in the bend of a knee,
dog at the feet,
my hand in yours, we are embraced
in animal presence, warmth,
the sea outside sounding
winter waves, one arriving after another
from the mystery far out
where in the depths of the sea
are other beings
that create their own light,
this world all one heartbeat.

From A History of Kindness.
Torrey House Press, 2020.
Reprinted with Permission.

Read this and other poems by Linda Hogan in A History of Kindness, available for purchase online.

As she does in so much of her work, Linda Hogan fosters a quiet yet wide-sweeping intimacy in this poem. Here, we find the affection of a speaker and her beloved, “embraced/in animal presence,” curled up with their dog and cat before bed on a winter night. Yet Hogan masterfully extends this closeness until the whole world is also held at the warm center of this late night scene. What began as the description of a couple “curved together . . . arm over another,” becomes proof of our own entanglement not just with other humans, but also with “other beings/that create their own light.” The final line draws us all together as Hogan reminds us we are not part of two separate worlds—animal and human—nor are we governed by any other false divisions. Instead, she implies, all beings share a pulse, a single “heartbeat,” that cannot always be explained, but can be felt on cold nights like this, when we seek out a deeper heat in order to stay warm.

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Describe a scene of comfort, coziness, or well-being, which the Danish call hygge (pronounced “hoo-ga”). Even if you’re alone, how do you feel a subtle intimacy with other beings in the world, who must also work to stay warm on winter nights? What allows you to trust in the world’s “one heartbeat”?

Photo by Larry Henderson

ABOUT THE POET: Linda Hogan

Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, teacher, and activist who has spent most of her life in Oklahoma and Colorado. Her fiction has garnered many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and her poetry collections have received the American Book Award, Colorado Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle nomination. Her latest book is A History of Kindness (Torrey House Press, 2020).

POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.

Thanks to hundreds of readers who have given donations big and small, Gwarlingo remains ad-free. Donors who give $50 become members. If you love Gwarlingo, please consider giving back.