One small step, one giant leap. Magnificent desolation, one remarked.
Lunar dust like powder. It was no trouble to walk around, one said.
Now the flag, now the rod. The surface resisted. It got only two inches in.
There was fear the flag would topple on camera or fly off. It did neither
in the moment. I am not sure where it is now. Salute, phone call, prayer.
Then a sixty-meter walk, photographs. Core samples collected: here’s soil,
plus rocks. Three new minerals discovered, later found also on earth. Now
a plaque. We come in peace, if not in peacetime. There was a speech prepared
in the event of disaster; the ritual would mimic a burial at sea. Each, of course,
had their own, If I should die–
Meanwhile, one orbited the moon alone. Not since Adam, he said, regarding
the extremes of his solitude. Although, it’s worth noting that accounts of Adam
suggest he was surrounded by a kingdom of earthlings preceding his arrival, not
to mention sunlight.
The return was fraught, there was a long list of disaster scenarios. It landed
upside-down, for example, but there was a plan for this. Then came quarantine,
then the parade, prayers of thanksgiving, cheers.
It is possible to be awed, as Abernathy was, by a magnificent achievement,
while simultaneously enraged that it was pursued while other relatively simple
requests were denied. Care for the sick, shelter: for children, fathers, veterans,
grandmothers. Food, some relief for the caged. Some end to the caging of bodies.
Some recognition of the unnamed dead. To ask, voice hoarse with rage and grief,
who commands this mission, who makes this leap? Just as it is possible
to frame a gorgeous picture of a newborn and place it on a distant desk,
in a corner office, to profess love and mean it, but never change a diaper,
never walk a wailing body back to peace.
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