Apollo By Moonlight Poem by Francisco R. Albano

(Reflections on the voyage of the ages)

1.

There is no staying here forever,
no pitching of tents after the feel
of rocks and the sight of the dust of fears.
As always, the distant glow of earth and people
Pulls the mind open to eternal visions
We must touch our dreams
To prove ourselves present but unknown stars.
Now it’s earthrise,
So the turning back,
Rebirth by fire and water,
A gentle air, but it’s never over.


2.

There is this guilt before the launching into space,
Tortures us like the sores of Lazarus
eating the crumbs of paradise.
Start of countdown. If things go wrong,
what forgiveness, waiting for justification
by a journey to the stars?
Our sky is an open conscience restless with desire
for a dropp of water to lick its tongue.
Expensive is the force of a million pounds
of thrust searing the earth. No stopping now.
We are virgins after the launching into space.


3.

Samples of moonrock, moonsoil they bring us
for our knowing more of the universe.
Let there be moonlight to discover
the genesis of beings lighted when we were
not there! Beginnings self-contained glow
for our reaching ends of what began.
There’s meanness in the process, but it’s all we’ve got
to keep us sanely laughing.
Distances are hints of mood by moonlight,
and moonrock, moonsoil
are samples of our feeling ends being.


Child of Babel this?
burning its way to heaven like the god of the sun,
and with the fuel of our spirit.
Child of Babel this?
daring to reach the limits of our tallness
to touch our crown of a million stars.
Child of Babel this?
Telling us we have not presumed,
in a language we understand.
We watch. Await silence uncovering epiphanies.
We tremble and are afraid.


5.

Swear still by the moon.
No footprints will ever make it constant,
cease becoming like the flow of love.
The seas say so looking up like howling
dogs unknowing of the meaning of night.
As it was in the beginning, is now,
and ever shall be, undiscovered,
the moon is a virgin of metaphor,
plays on the mind with light and shadow.
Swear still by the moon,
Romance is when we differ in our seeing.

____
(Remembering astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins, and Miss Universe 1969 Gloria Diaz of the Philippines)