Everyone’s Gone to the Moon

Fifty years ago today , human beings landed on the moon.

I wrote a poem about it, sort of,  but many years later:

 

 

Everyone’s Gone to the Moon

 

Rousseau painted the gypsy sleeping under the full moon

in dazzling deep cobalt sky ,

dreaming face like a totem serene

in a dream of lute music.

Pipe song,

grazing wildeyed lion

huge behind him

standing guard over his dreams

bedhead mane stiff with moonlight

eyes wild white balls and staring corneas

tail at the alert

 

1969 and I’m serving drinks

at the Kennett Square Country Club,

so glad to be 21 and able to serve drinks.

The golfers at the bar stare with wild white eyeballs

at the tiny moonman in his white spacesuit

moving jerkily on the cratered surface

faceless, the glass in his helmet shining back

the distant earth

and I notice it without much excitement,

immersed as I am in being 21 years old,

thinking this will happen a lot

from now on.

In my dreams.