Poems Submitted for April 6, 2021

Another two-part prompt. Time accordingly.

Where were you yesterday at 4am? Describe that place in as much sensory detail as possible.
Answer this question where were you when the first astronaut took the first step on the moon? (Likely, you weren’t born yet, so that’s a more exciting than my answer: I was alive, and supposedly I watched the moon landing, but I don’t remember a single thing about it except for being bored and wanting to watch cartoons; I’m neither ashamed nor proud of this.) It’s the same place. Now, you’re an astronaut. Use your description of where you were at 4am yesterday to describe your experience being the first astronaut taking the first step on the moon.

A Haiku-esq Dream
By S. Atticus O.

Spring morning at four
Am I alone playing for
Free with the sandman?

Planet to himself
Little man takes his first steps.
Awe. Child finds petals.

Breath in simple rings.
They surround a boy alone
In a field of maize.

Sudden jumping fish
Pulls focus to the river.
Scales shine at noontime.

Charles feeds the ocean.
Mystic, Hudson, Potomac,
Too, this one must be.

Waves crash against Sea
Walls rising from the teal swells.
Cloud covered evening.

Rock-top castle waits
While a woman sits with him -
She will fortune tell.

Taking first step on
The path. Fear in a new realm.
Night falls. Moon rises.

I wake from slumber
Thinking of simple dream boy
Who starts his journey.

Perhaps the first moon
Steps began in a boy’s dream.
One small step for man.

From the Moon
LK

Now and then, with a plastic bag
of garbage on my way out to the
tin can next to the garage, I have

glimpsed myself from a rocketship
on its way to the moon. 4am. A very clear
night, this image of my life, and my

self in my life. There’s a patch of green
spiked weeds looking over at me.
I pretend I can’t see them staring

through the eye of that one daisy
that grew straight out
of the center of them.

And over there, my husband stacked
a pile of stones. That ancient rite. Although
he piles them there because they wreck

the lawnmower.
The way everything has been kept hidden
to all of us

Except the astronauts.
Staring down at that flower staring back
at them. In

the morning a dragonfly might land
there, mistaking that eye for the moon
blank dare. It will helicopter into the center

of it, bearing, on stretcher, the wounded
passengers from the rollover accident
And I realize that I’ve been traveling

through space forever now. My
phone won’t charge. My neighbor
drives by in her Jeep, slowly. So

slow we’re talking forty miles below
the speed limit. She waves
at me. And I'm watching the world go by
on Earth, while—

someone too close is listening to Adele.
The atmosphere, so thin. I hate
everyone of these songs, but I can’t hear

it from where I am. 4am. I’m
an astronaut. Headed
for the moon. I apologize in advance:

You might not
be hearing from me
again for a while.

Inspired by the U of M Poetry Blast
By Grace Ball, BSN, 1980.

This article in the University Record, I could not get past.
From deep within my soul, it felt like a hand-grenade blast.
I so wanted to be on campus to experience this tidal wave of poetry creation.
So needed to bust out of this Covid-19 Pandemic Isolation.
So I “Poetry Challenged “my granddaughter, Cierra, to join me in the backyard at eight.
To enjoy, read, and hear, whatever words-today-we
create.