Astropoetica: July '69, by Tim Myers

Moon Trying to reach the moon, to understand it,
yearning to touch with our restless simian hands,
we make strange music, beautiful music,
dedicate it thus—
Claire de Lune, for example—

or we throw our science at it, columns of numbers,
diameter, density, orbital velocity,
our figures and formulas like stones
a boy hurls at bats in the twilight, hitting nothing—

or we offer up to it the mystery of ourselves—
in the way of traditional Japanese
moonwatching on verandas in October—
or in the way of wolves, grunion, nautili—

or, desperate at our failures,
in the crudeness of power,
send our mightiest machine

Tim Myers is a writer, songwriter, storyteller, and university lecturer at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. His chapbook That Mass at Which the Tongue Is Celebrant is just out from Pecan Grove Press. His children’s books have won recognition from the New York Times, NPR, the Smithsonian, Nickelodeon, and many others. He’s published over 100 poems, won a prize in a poetry contest judged by John Updike, won a major prize in science fiction, has been nominated for a Pushcart for an essay, and has published much other fiction and non-fiction for children and adults.