7/19/19 moon landing

I’ll sit here and listen to jazz music

Add up my pennies and

Hope for the future –

Did you know

Fifty years ago

The first men

Landed on the moon?

I’ll sip coffee and schedule

The next few days till

They’re too full to

Give me time to overthink

On the improbabilities

And all the endless possibilities 

Of life –

Did you know

Fifty years ago

We flew a rocket

To the moon

And by some miracle

It landed?

I’ll sit here

And try not to be overwhelmed and

Over stimulated by

All the people talking around me,

Try to drown them out in

Sweet trombone and saxophone –

Did you know

Fifty years ago

The moon had no footprints and then

We stepped there?

Planted a flag there?

Acting like a rock floating in space

Can be owned?

I’ll sit here

After shopping for bed linens and pillows

All morning,

After driving down a six lane interstate

And feeling it a miracle that I survived it –

And did you know

That fifty years ago

The first men landed on the moon?

Sent us back video footage of it?

Making it so that

People like my father heard 

Those legendary words

From the boxes in their living rooms –

Did you know

Every day bears an echo

Of past things?

One year from today

I will look back

And smile on who I am today,

Where I am today,

The things I did today – 

One year from now

It will be fifty-one years from

The day the first men

Set foot on the moon

Because you can’t stop the past

From echoing.