Alignments by Joey Copsey

they’ve hung in the southern sky.
Jupiter and Saturn
Neck and neck
Racing towards the horizon.Then, just before bed,
as I watch my dog
Sniff in the dark
for a place to mark his own,
Mars rises through the trees.For the first time in my life
All three are witnessed in one breath.
One panorama of light.
Even here on the outskirts of the city
They dominate the sky.
Suddenly one cannot deny
The plane of the solar system
And our place in this dervish of twirling orbs.

They seem so close.
Not like in my stargazing youth
When, like everything else,
they seemed so distant
and significant.

Now they feel like neighbors.
I want to pop by Jupiter
And complain to him about his lawn.
It’s just littered with all these moons!
Someone should really talk to him about this hoarding.
He replies that he’ll think about cleaning up,
If we ever stop sending cameras to spy on him,
And just come by like civilized people for tea.

Saturn grunts disapproval

of all this neighborly nosiness,
thinks of raising his ringed fence.
Go for it old timer we say.
You paint it lovely.Mars, you’re on notice!
We’ll be by soon for a cuppa.Age does this.
Draws every far away thing close.
Makes every staggering sight mundane.
Experience expands the expectation of novelty.
What is a solar system afterall
Compared to the Hubble deep field?
What is a childhood memory of the big city,
When the adult commutes it daily?

Don’t buy into these diminishing returns.
In the end
What is all of it?
All the grandeur
The adventure,
The undreamed of spaces still unfilled,
Compared to a quiet place
To read in the sun?
Or looking up from a dark driveway,
To see three planets and the moon
Hanging on strings above your head
While the dog kicks the grass?