the Great Conjunction
two days on from the storm
plows chew the gray-stained snow.
I'm outside, the first time in weeks,
thinking the usual:
that New York is a held breath
in a sore throat, that those footsteps
on the ice-glassed pandemic streets
are no different from the taunts
of a bomb, that there's barely
any reason at all to leave my bed.
but
I don't know
maybe it's time to go further
to where the roadway peaks
& when I get there Jupiter & Saturn are kissing
at the edge of the metropolitan heavens
for the first time in eight hundred years on this Earth,
a cosmic waltz aligned at the end of an ill-starred year—
when I get there electric helixes blaze emerald & white
& ruby & blue across brick entryways & window guards,
lights dazzling like joyful neurons: signs of a people
doing something, here & now, for the holy love it—
when I get there a woman of eighty raises a phone to record
the chime-box song of a plastic Santa perched
on a recycling bin, & there's laughter
on the other end of her call, real laughter, real laughter—
& when I reach home I am smiling & in love.