Moonrising
written by: Julian Matthews
12 men stepped on you
Bounced around a bit
Planted some flags
Stole some rocks
Then left you
Alone
For 51 years
In the interim you pulled away
The length of an average basketballer
An inch and half yearly, a quiet escape, perhaps
(backstepping for the three-pointer?)
A slow imperceptible receding into the abyss of space
Until one night we looked up
And you were gone
No reality TV reveal moment
No walk of shame, nor boardroom firing
No golden buzzer, nor syncing spinning chairs
No early Cowell X, nehhhttt, mid-performance
Only a stilling of the oceans,
no longer lapping shores, or hearts, in waves
Our earth-bound narcissism wobbling in shame
Reducing you to a mere selfie-bomber
The climate change chaos we ignited
Now an explosive, lunarless reality
You grew tired of all the odes, the songs, the poems, the art
Pin-cushioning your wrinkled visage, framing you on walls,
strong-arming your likeness in musty galleries
So many merciless, misogynistic metaphors,
strident sterile similes, lock and cock clichés
like darts missing targets, a bull’s eye
for dodgy, “broken hearts”
You left us–
Because you had had enough and needed to go
Clear your headspace, so to speak
Social distancing against a virulent human race
Putting necessary boundaries on the universe’s growing menace:
those ungrateful billionaires and their outsized egos
Turning your face, neither gracefully nor gently,
to the stars, your dark side mooning us
forever–
(You always were a badass!
We just never knew it.)
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
Commemorating the anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon on July 20, 1969
- Ten Years On - April 3, 2024
- Monsters Unincorporated - October 28, 2023
- Moonrising - July 11, 2023
