Sharon says the moon looks worried
As if it is capable of human concern
As if it could ask the question
What are you people doing down there?
Watching the full moon rising after a short day
We walk in the twilight of the early sunset
Looking for turkey silhouettes in the trees
Thankful for a warm November evening.
The moon seemed so far away when I was a child
Before the distance became a short trip
Just a few days to get there and back
To see the hidden dark side for the first time.
Now my youth seems far away beyond reach
Existing perhaps as a figment of my imagination
Snippets of stories that surface into associations
Like myths of ancestral moons.
Sharon teaches basic literacy to adults
Women who were left behind in school
Learning a lesson this week about double vowels
Like good and moon sounding different but spelled the same.
While I teach numeracy to these same women
Thinking the language of math is easier
Having consistent rules with no exceptions
Necessary to engineer traveling to the moon.
The moon by any other name would pull the same
Tides twice a day rising and falling predictably
But the double vowel oo sound is older than history
A collective memory kept near enough to touch.
There is good reason to worry as we all know
When more of the same is making things worse
But the moon face that I see is happy enough
As if knowing people will realize how to end this madness.
You could say that we have a classical scale problem
When everything wrong stems from our spectacular success
Demanding a new form of organization for the public good
Don't you know that socialism is what must come next?
