The Moon at Knowle Hill

The moon was married last night

and nobody saw

dressed up in her ghostly dress

for the summer ball.

The stars shimmied in the sky

and danced a whirligig;

the moon vowed to be true

and lit up the corn-rigs.

She kissed the dark lips of the sky

Above the summer house

She in her pale white dress

swooned across the vast sky

The moon was married last night

the beautiful belle of the ball

and nobody saw her at all

except a small girl in a navy dress

who witnessed it all.

Jackie Kay

‘On the road through the clouds’

On the road through the clouds

Is there a short cut

To the summer moon?

Den Sute-Jo

Translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi

The Crescent Moon

Slipping softly through the sky

Little horned, happy moon,

Can you hear me up so high?

Will you come down soon?

On my nursery window-sill

Will you stay your steady flight?

And then float away with me

Through the summer night?

Brushing over tops of trees,

Playing hide and seek with stars,

Peeping up through shiny clouds

At Jupiter or Mars.

I shall fill my lap with roses

Gathered in the milky way,

All to carry home to mother.

Oh! what will she say!

Little rocking, sailing moon,

Do you hear me shout – Ahoy!

Just a little nearer, moon,

To please a little boy.

Amy Lowell

Sally Ride Speaks to the Schoolgirls

Don’t believe the quiet heat that waits to pull

your velocipede to pieces

when you pedal like you’re tired of waiting.

Someone will want to solder your throat shut

while your mind turns figure-eights around

faceless people who promise you

space travel is one hundred years away.

Do not close your mouth for them.

Speed comes to anti-gravity paint

the hacked up remains

of spoiled shoe laces and band-aids

that stew on the blacktops, awaiting no rescue.

Run fast enough to crack your scabs,

run fast enough to hear

your arteries turn all your thoughts to nothing

more than a righteous racket.

When I flew to the edge I was neither sight nor

sound, not a grayscale photo

I was speed

I was the hand that holds the storybook illustration

I airbrushed the shadows clean off the page

I was an acrobat courting the cold-blooded stars

I was the slingshot that pulls itself impossibly taut,

that kisses its spine good-bye.

I counted backwards and my bones became hollow

I steered the shuttle with no space for pins or needles

sometimes chasing weightlessness is the only way

to keep your blood blitzing, to remember the

years you spent writing out equations,

whispering promises to cramped book spines,

answering barbed questions, remembering

you’re the first

and sitting up straighter.

I raced against the rest with

no sir, not a single tear shed

Danny Dunn turned anti-gravity cartwheels in my dreams

and there was no divide

my interstellar medium, X-ray visions and Canadarm arm

shot me straight up