Where were you on July 20, 1969?
On the eve of my 39th birthday, wheeling the TV cart into the living room
of my center hall colonial with my wife and in-laws and my eldest daughter Randy on her grandfather’s lap,
(four-year-old Allegra
asleep in her room),
five pairs of human eyes
drinking in the incredible – men on the moon, greatest scientific feat of all time, and I still struggling with the rabbit ears antenna to make the image clearer;
Armstrong’s carefully prepared
“one step, one leap” metaphor milking in best Madison Avenue style the great moment for what it would always be worth;
my father-in-law and I
engaged in speculation
about how Jewish astronauts could observe Rosh Hashanah, or say the prayer to the new moon while standing on it, my daughter interrupting,
“Grandpa, I know the prayer by heart;” then all of us quiet for a long time – my last hope that it might be a hoax gone,
I felt bereft – beauty and belief and fancies once owned proudly now replaced by a lifeless sphere; next day biggest headline ever on front page of the Times: MEN LAND ON MOON and a poem by Archibald MacLeish
followed a few days later by a special edition featuring several poems, some acclaiming the achievement, others lamenting the loss,
a feast for poets
but my muse silent, lifeless.
Since then,
the moon reminds me
from time to time
that on that day
a member of my species
trampled on her face,
violating with one irreverent step
a million years of magic
and myth and wondrous gazing –