Observatory
May 30 2014


At sunset today
Gotham's steel and glass
will bask in gold
its concrete canyons glow.
Its beetling traffic pause, busy people stop
to notice the sky.

When a rigid grid of roads,
super-imposed

on a rustic island
where a river widens, and slows,
lines-up with the sun.
Which drops all the way down

between high-rise towers,
sighted

down long sheer thoroughfares
aimed as straight as telescopes.
It seems gigantic, so close to earth
hovering in a shimmer of light.

New Yorkers rarely see the sky,
living in shadow
under invisible stars.
The city that contains them is closed,
a buzzing cosmopolis
exempt from nature.

But for a single day
the purifying sun
penetrates all the way down.
To battered asphalt, sticky sidewalks,
squinting passers-by

who have stopped, in surprise.

Who, for an instant
have found themselves in a vast instrument
of concrete columns, and lines of sight,

a modern Stonehenge

observing the stars.
Where their sky-scraping buildings

seem small.
Where they look down the barrel of the street, its steep-sided walls
as it tilts against the sun.
Where they can feel the planet
wheeling beneath their feet;
enormous
unstoppable.

Where they see the sun,
burning oblivious
setting as it always does.
And like awe-struck Druids
can't help but watch.

I read an article today about the twice-a-year phenomenon, infelicitously dubbed "Manhattanhenge". This is when rigid grid of Manhattan becomes an astronomical observatory, lining up precisely with the setting sun; and when I imagine its busy, self-important, and mostly oblivious inhabitants are suddenly transfixed by the beauty and enormity of nature. It happened this spring on May 29.

I return often to this theme: the puniness and insignificance of man; the indifference of nature to us. Here, I tried especially to capture that sensation when the sun is hovering on the horizon at the bottom of a long canyon-like street. How the frame of reference can suddenly shift:  the sun fixed, while you feel yourself carried on the vast inertia of this enormous planet wheeling through the sky. It's all about solipsism, humility, looking up.

Many hundreds of years on, we aren't much different than our forbears, the ancient Druids: probably as superstition, and certainly as preoccupied with erecting monuments; but having lost much of their humility, wonder, and reverence.