Poetry in Motion
New York
A Night in a World
Heather McHugh![A poster featuring a mosaic by Sally Gill depicts a colorful foreground on which a slanted house sits against a starry night sky. Below this is a poem by Heather McHugh titled A Night in a World.](https://poetrysociety.org/assets/poetry-in-motion/Heather-McHugh.jpg)
A Night in a World
I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t stay home
where the big dipper rises from, time
and again: one mountain ash.
And I wouldn’t have thought without travelling out
how huge that dipper was,
how small that tree.
This poem appears in Heather McHugh's collection Hinge & Sign: Poems, 1968-1993 (Wesleyan University Press, 1994).
Edges of a South Brooklyn Sky (2018) © Sally Gil, MTA NYC Transit Avenue U Station.
Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design. Photo by Etienne Frossard.
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