home, after sandy

In early-winter sunset, the soft light

is falling on the blue-grey water of the New York Harbor.
The boats are sleeping and self-sufficient,

and the Statue of Liberty is pale, green, glowing.
I'm about to land at LaGuardia airport,
I'm coming home,

and the beaches of New Jersey and Long Island 

are still dim, marked with seawater.
The outer-borough
apartment buildings, with their sandpaper roofs,
huddle in the November cold,

and the graveyards of Brooklyn and Queens

sprawl out in chill green,
in momentary light,
the grey gravestones
are smaller than tic-tacs,
in crooked rows
like dominos,
before careless hands.