
NASA photo by Apollo 11 astronauts.
First published in Science Fiction Poetry Review in 2002.
dusty lunar soil,
seeds, water, sunshine, and time:
Harvest Moon achieved
gray Linne Crater
pocked by one hundred windows
family homesteads
at crater’s center
sundial gnomon counts the hours
hundreds every “day”
Moon-born five-year-old:
look up, she giggles, that’s Earth,
all that blue — all water!
new hope, only home
too willowy for Earth-g
what makes a human?
not the Moonish way
to cut off debate, but . . .
. . . three Lunar days
harvest fails again
impossible colony
orders: go Earthside
dissenters unite
craters become foxholes —
free Luna or die!
hasty interments
moonsuits salvaged, naked dead
someday — monuments
tall sundial gnomon
counting names inscribed in dust
Moon’s memorial