A neighbor doesn’t know I can see him
peeing on his pyre of leaves
My insurance agent most likely
won’t pick up her phone until noon.
I’m wondering if I should leave the corduroy
of this couch, and walk the mile
for a double espresso.
Or pat myself
on the back like the yoga teacher
says we should do, after our hardest pose.
Maybe I shouldn’t care my old red car
is smashed into another world.
I’ve never
seen this bird here—a stellar’s jay
insisting something I should take to heart,
his yakking and yakking salty-sweet.
I take from the cracked bowl this ripe peach,
lift it to my face in rapture, then float back
into my body.
I want to stay in the house all day
and read poetry from a time
when people rowed out in little boats.
Light Box
This morning I light
the rose-scented candle,
switch on the light box
that casts an alien-like
blue light that can work
magic under the skin.
My dog whines
under her bone-print
blanket in a dream.
My pencil seems
weightless and silly.
Looking around
for something to put
into this poem,
I see the reflection
in my light box
of some dark flock
flying and flying behind me.
Nancy Takacs is a former wilderness instructor who lives in Utah and Wisconsin, where she workshops with writers with early Alzheimer’s. The Worrier Poems received the Juniper Prize for Poetry (2017), and it was the 2018 winner of the 15 Bytes Poetry Book Award. (website)
