the Great Conjunction

A poem.

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.