Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Moon Visits Altered History


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A headline in the Tacoma News Tribune two days ago read, "Moon Visits Altered History," and for an instant I misread "Visits" as being a verb and "Altered" as an adjective, so that the headline seemed to be about a journey the moon had taken.


Moon Visits Altered History


Orbit became a wearisome groove, a tedious
channel. Sun played the same old carom-shots
with rays, and just below, sad plants and creatures
marked the days. A bored moon unclipped itself
from gravity to visit an altered history.

It visited moon-museums in the gallaxy,
drank with disappointed asterioids who'd
aspired to be moons, interviewed multi-mooned
planets to ask how they kept their lunar
calendars straight. The moon was gone for a

month, exactly. No one but a few astronomers
and surfers noticed. The moon came back
to trudge its orbit like a mule, plowing
time, spinning space into legend.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

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