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.