Lonely, Deeply

My mother’s life is my life.
My friend’s life is my life.
Here is what the city gives me:

A boyfriend at a bus stop.
Silver towers against an ivory sky.
Granite skin and steel sinews.

The arrangement of mass
follows its own logic,
I in my babushka and bangs

in the cave of the crowded bus,
the kaleidoscope of gray
as we push through revolving doors,

Van Johnson’s long eyelashes,
Mama’s face eroded by grief,
my arms an afterthought.

The distributor of time
answers to no one.
The war has never ended,

the candles ignite themselves
at St. Patrick’s. Lou Gehrig’s
trim figure bounds from depth of field

on the left side of the frame.
The lovers’ faces are monuments to light
in the brownstones’ shadows.

They have faith that gravity won’t change,
our bodies won’t go flying in the air,
and the music of the spheres is as present

as Franz Waxman’s score.
Put a little love in it, Alan King advises.
Today is a day made out of diamonds.