February in Queens

Her name is Sabina but she looks like my sister.
I visit her in Astoria. A sound, like astonishment
maybe mixed with stars. She tools around,
all day long, cheek by jowl, with the Guru of Flushing.
He has all these plans to give lectures on big things
that look like small things. He says, always keep
an extra place-setting for the unseen guest
who comes to your bed. Having slept, so long,
in the secular sense. Nag Champa incense in the air
and the water and the bread. Sabina says, persistence
of vision is the retina's hieroglyphic palimpsest.
From up in our window, we watch the Queen of Night
pedal by on her bicycle. She is heading eastward
but her wheels spin backwards. Here in this cavern,
the horizon line must be imagined circling around us,
as with a fish-eye lens. He always says, deep focus
makes ground turn figurative and swings back again.
The way we overlook one million tiny windows of the
contiguous cities themselves. Become haunted by ghosts
of our own faces when the lights come on. Just above
the rooftops, clouds and a moon-sized sun.