I am supposed to get to the point
––apparently, by the logic
of the algorithm
but I am
only ever able to teach
at an angle, on a curve, following
an penumbra’s long arc across unwritten skies.
justice & optics
& sun flares in atmosphere
Tag: justice
Landings
One small step, one giant leap. Magnificent desolation . . . Lunar dust like powder. It was no trouble to walk around, one said. Now the flag, now the rod. The surface resisted.
On this day in 1969, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, followed shortly after by Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins maintained a solitary lunar orbit. The world watched. Meanwhile, the mother of Vivian Strong, shot dead by police at fourteen, was grieving. It’s the age of the Cold War space race, also Stonewall. Demonstrators in the U.S. and worldwide call for civil rights, an end to war, racial justice, housing and labor reforms. The U.S. has been at war with Vietnam for fourteen years at this point, and it will not end for another six. Millions dead, scorched earth. It’s the age of the Biafran war in West Africa, The Troubles in Ireland, a Lybian coup underway, the Weathermen gathering in Chicago, the Rozariazo in Argentina, the first U.S. draft lottery since WWII about to begin. John marries Yoko and Chicago Police officers shoot Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, among others. Medgar, Malcolm, King: all have been assassinated, now. Blind Faith rocks Hyde Park, Franco closes the border, The Stones release Let it Bleed. In a talk to teachers delivered that year, James Baldwin opens with an acknowledgement of the moment at hand. Let’s begin, he says, by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. The following is a morning meditation on this moment and its lasting relevance to ours, culled from readily-accessible details about the Apollo 11 mission.
One small step, one giant leap. Magnificent desolation, one remarked.
Lunar dust like powder. It was no trouble to walk around, one said.
Now the flag, now the rod. The surface resisted. It got only two inches in.
There was fear the flag would topple on camera or fly off. It did neither
in the moment. I am not sure where it is now. Salute, phone call, prayer.
Then a sixty-meter walk, photographs. Core samples collected: here’s soil,
plus rocks. Three new minerals discovered, later found also on earth. Now
a plaque. We come in peace, if not in peacetime. There was a speech prepared
in the event of disaster; the ritual would mimic a burial at sea. Each, of course,
had their own, If I should die–
Meanwhile, one orbited the moon alone. Not since Adam, he said, regarding
the extremes of his solitude. Although, it’s worth noting that accounts of Adam
suggest he was surrounded by a kingdom of earthlings preceding his arrival, not
to mention sunlight.
The return was fraught, there was a long list of disaster scenarios. It landed
upside-down, for example, but there was a plan for this. Then came quarantine,
then the parade, prayers of thanksgiving, cheers.
It is possible to be awed, as Abernathy was, by a magnificent achievement,
while simultaneously enraged that it was pursued while other relatively simple
requests were denied. Care for the sick, shelter: for children, fathers, veterans,
grandmothers. Food, some relief for the caged. Some end to the caging of bodies.
Some recognition of the unnamed dead. To ask, voice hoarse with rage and grief,
who commands this mission, who makes this leap? Just as it is possible
to frame a gorgeous picture of a newborn and place it on a distant desk,
in a corner office, to profess love and mean it, but never change a diaper,
never walk a wailing body back to peace.
In the Waiting Room
Considering the anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States at this moment I was reminded to return to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “I Am Waiting,” which returned me to the hope that inspired this response, this love note to America, for an occasion somewhere between Last Rites and Baptism.
SPARROWS WAITING
We were sorting the Grapes of Wrath,
waiting for the shift to be done.
Our unrest was everywhere:
flags and chanting; paint and the piercing
of swords into the flesh at the sides of sworn enemies.
When was our Last Supper, and when would it return?
Wonder, we looked for you everywhere, waiting for our numbers
to be called.
The whales waited elsewhere,
bleeding oceans back into their ears;
do they hear each other through the current of it?
We wanted to know
what they’d been saying all along
after hellos and we wanted to lie down again
––the lovers, the weepers, the dreamers,
across the Great Divide, our bodies bridges
for the feet that could not believe
unless they stepped across us,
unless they put their hands in the wounds
of their feet in our backs, back to the Lost Continent
they’d been trained to disbelieve America,
we were waiting for your music for so long
that when you hobbled back to the Dark Tower
your intimations of immortality bleeding out
from stray bullet wounds, your torch arm falling
slack, we couldn’t help ourselves America,
we circled you, we circled ourselves no one
was looking, but we were there; we stood up,
our single bodies no longer the bridge
it was our hands Now we held
them the shape of us unfastened
from the overpass ––still, we held, some
of us even though the gaps
of our form were widening
our collective path an open mouth.
Eye, be on your sparrow now. Watch us
as we stand before ourselves
waiting
here.