Moonscape

2019 – 50 years since the first ‘small step’….

It had a dignity,
an innocence even,
the surface of the moon –
before they came…

A world with no seasons
or air or wind or water –
but a place with the power
to pull oceans on earth
from shore to shore…

Lunar highlands –
pale in borrowed light,
long-dead volcanoes and lava flows
and unascended mountains.

Great plains
scattered with rocks and boulders
casting broken shadows,
furrows and craters
made by meteors
that crashed but could not burn.

And the gritty grey-whiteness of dust
ground fine over billions of years,
floating and clinging on contact –
as it clung to the men who ‘came in peace’
and made this world a wasteland.

They  left so much rubbish behind –
the remnants of rockets
ladders and landing stages
abandoned jeeps and buggies
hammers and shovels
flags and golf balls even.

Thousands of bits and pieces,
but a legacy condensed to the single shape
of a human foot and the print of a boot
stamping forever
on the face of the moon.