Yeah, a day late and a dollar short for all readers. Typical Neptune-Jupiter conjunction, am I right? You get the idea for the poem as Jupiter meets Neptune, but the clarity of its structure doesn’t emerge until Jupiter has gone past, and you’re out the other side. And then finding the time to sit down and type it up for you lovely readers… well.
Hail to you, lord of Lightning and Thunder, and to you, prince of the undining wave: we observe you both, agape with wonder, seeing one traveler shining and bright, while the other hides in the deep abyss! One provides structure and order and norms, and one the chaos of vision and dream. To have only one, first seems a perfect bliss, but soon we come to honor only forms, losing essence for the sake of the frame. The scaffold keeps the building — or the noose — until what's begun can be completed; and dreamers provide many an excuse for why this plan — or that — is defeated. Yet vision matched with structure builds anew; and structure, without a plan to maintain, will surely fail when dreamers walk away. An empire's as frail as morning dew when in the old citadel, none remain to hoist the old banner, day after day. So, great Jove, and Neptune, at your meeting, astride plans over the Piscean marsh — we here below send you joyful greeting, and pray your judgments will be fair yet harsh. May dreams of fairer futures be well-framed, while wreckers' billiards smash against the foul, and injustice is flushed on the next tide. May new choices be imagined, and named... even as our best achievements, abide.
I’m sorry to say it will be a while before this poem is useful again. And I probably won’t be here to see it. Neptune and Jupiter next conjunct in Pisces on May 10-11, AD 2188. Raise a glass in my honor, though.
