Artemis II

It has been 50 years since

The Eagle has landed—

braving egress from your blue-green swirl of Earth

into the astral plane,

your foiled feet grazed my zircon shores,

planted your stakes—

frail, carbon-based life forms

enclosed in aluminum, titanium,

breathing borrowed air—

capsule breaking orbit recalls Selene

driving her white-horsed chariot:

a silvered symphony

siloed inside the silent inky dark.

though you hominids are only born from Earth and then become it, in death,

(the part and not the whole)

I have come to equate

Gaia’s teal swirls with the light tap

dances of your appendages

upon my cratered pores

and have caught myself musing

upon the prospect of your return

I can’t say I was expecting

your re-entry so soon

and so, in shyness,

Eclipsed under a shadowed

Veil of Sun

and braced

for impact

when there was none

Instead, encircling closer,

you do not dance upon me

with pattering pirouettes

but only with retina and lens,

borne open wide upon my frontal face and then

you rocket today to

see my hidden side—

my Saturnine facet—

arcane and thrumming,

a secret cipher only I can sing

for just the vaporous void to hear ring when

for billions of years I

bore the sole eye—

witness and testimony

steadfast and waiting

but you who are new

seek to prod, probe, own

and mine.

I know I am lucky

to be the sole body

to stem your tides

and spark your mused

revelry of painting, song and poem

For I have received letters from

jealous Ganymede,

who covets the attention

of Jupiter to his outer moons

and now dreads

his swirling-red-spot-approach

closer to her horizon,

boasting tired tales of

taut trajectories

while casting off his

dusty rings, imagined gifts

from those other

painted paramours

Again, you make your exit.

But now that you have beheld all of me—

naked, blighted and spotted opaline—

It is you who have become

my muse