Fall colors blaze out in concentric rings from a lake in eastern Pomerania, Poland.
Look
But it wasn’t, on a mid-winter evening, rising
—-not the moon; it was actually some uptown building’s peak light
appearing at a glance out the train window, just as round
and propped in that occurring hyper-real clarity,
low in the sky.
The surprise alone was striking enough to jot down
in a rumpled matchbook, the only thing I had
to bear witness (and to extend your amusement)
until some seconds passed and you tapped me, saying,
“like that,” pointing behind us,
“over there.”
“Look.”
Climbing up the backs of skyscrapers
and still so yellow, not yet rinsed of the horizon,
just as the sun’s melting behind Jersey.
Struck again, only deeper this time: all those desolate
evenings & erratic early mornings waiting on phone calls,
continents apart,
staring out of windows and up at moons like we were
banished from everything critical to time & place,
asterisks in a story of fugues.
Or like we were lofted too, and were now coming down
through winds and meridians into the solid presence of this train,
these seats, the passengers around us, the shitty but welcome light—-
everything taken captive for our new eyes’
sudden appraisal,
our own keeping,
together.
