---
title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
id: apollo11
genre: verse

ekphrastic:
    image: "panorama-apollo11.jpg"
    title: "Big deal."
    link: "http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141220.html"

project:
    title: Elegies for alternate selves
    class: elegies
    order: 5
    next:
    - title: Ars poetica
      link: arspoetica
    prev:
    - title: And
      link: and
...

| So it's the [fucking moon][].  Big deal.  As if
| you haven't seen it before, hanging in the sky
| like a piece of [rotten meat][] nailed to the wall,

| a maudlin love letter (the i's dotted with [hearts][])
| tacked to the sky's door like ninety-eight theses.
| Don't stare at it like it means anything.

| Don't give it the chance to collect meaning
| from your hand like an old pigeon.  Don't dare ascribe
| it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say

| in your affairs.  It's separated from your life
| by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space,
| the same distance you stepped away from time that night

| you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope
| knocking in the dark.  It was then that time fell apart,
| had a nervous breakdown and started following you

| everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you're going.
| You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer
| and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove
| that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn.

[fucking moon]: deathstrumpet.html
[rotten meat]: roughgloves.html
[hearts]: proverbs.html