Ad Astra
We were just children, so we loved it all —
the lure of the last frontier, silver spacesuits
for the chosen few, Canaveral’s tall
gantries, the countdowns and blastoffs and racing
the Russkies, our nemeses. By night
we learned the stars and the planets, the lunar
phases, the future in black and white.
Our purpose: We were going to the moon —
to the stars! We — that word still mattered. We
invoked the ancient gods — Mercury, Saturn,
Apollo — reborn as our machines
with a mission for all mankind — that mattered,
too, a promise kept for all the world
to see, even schoolkids like us — especially
schoolkids like us, such good little girls
and boys, so primed for adventure, so fresh-faced
and ready. But we weren’t primed for suffering
or the letdown that comes the day
after triumph — it wasn’t enough,
never enough.
In my own little way,
I had a thing for rockets, loved the whoosh
of liftoff, the streaking skyward, the pull
of gravity no match for the mad push
of the engine’s unbridled blast, the dull
pop, barely audible at apogee,
the tense breathless wait for the parachute
to blossom overhead. I strained to see
where the unrelenting prairie wind would
deliver the payload (a horny toad
or a grasshopper) safely to the ground.
But not always. One time the ship exploded,
littered the dry grass and sage around
me with fire. I tried to stamp it out, failed —
the flames were everywhere.
The firemen who
came with shovels were furious and railed
at me: You were playing with fireworks! Through
my tears, I sputtered to explain: No! Not
fireworks! It was a model rocket! It’s
a scientific hobby! My dad bought
it for me to learn physics! And the kits
cost three dollars! I mowed the lawn all summer
and —
They’d heard enough. They took my name,
demanded my parents’ telephone number,
departed in disgust. I was to blame
for the blackened acre — I felt so dumb,
so worthless. That was the end of my rocketry
career.
Did we feel the same way
when the Challenger exploded and mocked
our aspirations, turned our feet to clay?
Our greatest achievement, man on the moon,
our pyramid, now stranded in the past
like Chitzén Itzá — abandoned, marooned
like everything we thought was built to last.
© Michael Fleming
Putney, Vermont
March 2024
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