In this instant there is reckoning.

Millions of suns are born and burn white hot,
space stretches tentacles and draws juice
from primal sound across barriers that draw apart
with the speed of light,
and black holes are brightly intense
sucking in matter like puppets on a string.

And yet I woke up this morning, once again,
and found myself in alignment with yesterday’s ceiling,
in the same progression between sleep and awakening,
as time unwound once more from order to chaos,
and exhaustion took over from the urge to get things done.

This is how the universe expands and galactic wars are won.

And newspaper columns get written, high energy breakfasts get eaten,
and love forms puddles on an overworked music score.
So many compromises made, so that we can jointly own
a crooked house on a San Francisco sea shore.

I walk down Manhattan and look over my shoulder
at galaxies I am leaving behind, in this instant of reckoning.