License

Keeping my mind on love today       as I drive down Connecticut to G,             past the warrens of condominiums, past the anonymous blocks       of 8-story office buildings where             the hundred thousand lawyers toil (if that trusty Anglo-Saxon verb       can be used for depose and litigate),             so I stop to marvel at the sun back- lighting the gaggle of Canada geese       wending alphabetically across the sky—             great grey honkers who mate for life— now a w, now a v, who's the leader       I wonder, and how do they know             which inlet of Hudson Bay to call home, which long path is free       of the hunters' Ought-Oughts,             and how many ganders are part of that gaggle, and how many       gaggles make a googol—always             this battle inside my yipping beagle of a brain between how many       and how lovely, between the stone             and the shimmer, between the cloud- refracted beams of golden dust       and everything we'd ever need             to know about the sun: lone star, accident, 93 million miles out—       and stars burn out, all of them,             thousands more extinguished each night: poof, no longer there,       wherever there is, or was, though             their light shines on, iridescent beaded thread of the infinite       celestial quilt, a googol of stars,             each one nothing but gaseous mass and filigreed edge, burning       a hundred thousand star-years             into the essentially empty universe, in one nook of a random speck       of which I'm passing, anon, through             the metal detector in the lobby, past the uniformed guard, up the center       elevator, 8th floor, 2nd right, where your             gap-toothed grin and our license to wed merge in delight.