In the Best Sense, Held

Relations: Old Light/New Sun/Postmistress/Earth/04421
Philip Booth

From broken dreams,
we wake to every day's
brave history,

the gravity
of every moment
we wake

to let our lives
inhabit: now, here, again,
this very day,

passionate as all
Yeats woke in old age
to hope for, the sun

turns up, under
an off-shore cloudbank
spun at 700 and

some mph to meet it,
rosy as the cheeks
of a Chios woman

Homer may have been
touched by, just
as Janet

is touching, climbing
familiar steps, granite
locally quarried,

to work at 04421,
a peninsular village
spun, just as

Janet is spun,
into light, light appearing
to resurrect

not simply its own
life but the whole
improbable

system, tugging
the planet around to
look precisely

as Janet looks,
alight with the gravity
of her office,

before turning
the key that opens up
its full

radiance:
the familiar arrivals,
departures,

and even predictable
orbits in which,
with excited

constancy, by how
to each other
we're held, we keep

from spinning out
by how to each other
we hold.