Full Moon, July 2022

So already, during the month of July, like so many other people, I became fascinated by the images being sent to Earth by the James Webb Space Telescope. I began reading, looking, listening, and trying to write about the telescope and its findings that had me so excited during yet another month of discouraging political and climate-related developments. 

 

Driving to and from Orono, Maine several weeks ago, I heard interviews with two different pairs of enthusiastic scientists who, with seeming ease, made inviting and intelligible to non-scientists like myself the science behind the telescope and the revelations of its images. "We are stardust," one explained, quoting Joni Mitchell to begin his brief but coherent discussion of space, time, and life's origins. Because I understood Joni Mitchell, and therefore also knew that "we are golden," I listened even more intently.

 

The following poem didn't come easy, but here it is, "Full Moon, July 2022."

 

Full Moon. Thunder Moon. 

Buck Moon. Man in the Moon

 

Peers down. Only 

Fireflies wink back.

 

No faces tilt up from 

Darkened yards or stoops. 

 

Curious Moon. Lonesome Moon 

Peers into hilltop house. 

 

Windows cast soft light,

Warm yellow, flickering blue.  

 

Through one, silhouette studies 

Field of gold-flecked indigo  

 

In photo featured just below

The morning headline. 

 

Through one, notecard rectangle 

Glows a kindred image— 

 

Jagged copper peaks

Overlook receding 

     darkness. 

 

Through one, small group 

     sits 

Transfixed before a 

     screen. 

 

Filmy, trembling ovals 

     float, 

Embryos on an ink-dark 

     sea. 

Reminded Moon. 

     Recalling Moon.

1969 July.   

All eyes trained on 

     screens, 

And then—collective 

     gasp!-- 

Man Walks on the Moon

From whose rock-strewn yard, 

 

Earth is a blue-green bauble

Dangling in the void. 

Forgotten Moon. Slighted Moon. 

Planted before ghostly screens

In familiar living rooms,

Homing pigeon hearts

 

Trumpet love for Earth  

And dream of homecoming,

 

Focal Moon. Target Moon. 

Valued most as vantage point.  

Curious Moon. Wondering Moon 

Peers again. Scans the web.

 

Hubble humbled. Infrared. 

Space become a time machine. 

 

Pensive Moon. Poet’s Moon.  

Eternal witness to human quest.

Genius chasing new horizons 

Crafting tools that see black holes, 

 

Galaxies, and dying stars-- 

Then send their pictures back to Earth

Where scientists and spellbound others   

Marvel at Creation’s stuff.

Practiced Moon. Constant Moon.  

Waxes wise before he wanes:

A monthly marvel’s bound to pale 

Before the novel wondrous. 

 

So Full Moon offers silent praise 

For striving, sharing humankind.

 

Then turning to the fireflies 

Who flash and mate, flash and mate,

 

Oblivious to other lights, 

He muses on old news:

 

They’ll number less in August.  

Sturgeon Moon. Supermoon.