Moon Walk

Summary

What are the Lunarians up to tonight?

You ask. There's the moon hanging mute

off the back of the hill. What sad mouths

it has, what limping eye, it keeps us awake

with its mooning. You know it is rock, gravity

holding it and us together and apart; a Soviet

poster shows a cosmonaut caught by a thumb

on the moon's hook. There's no God up there

it says, confirming what no one can confirm.

Before either of us was made, (your egg inside

my egg inside my mother) they sent Laika

for whom there was no return, only the marvel

of earth and the moon rising brighter, brighter

in the window of her craft. Whatever

they want us to believe, let's leave her there,

a moon goddess for the moon people

on their moonwalk, just like us out after hours,

we who know the Lunarian flag has stars.