Another poem about the moon By Lauren Scharhag

I watched A Trip to the Moon. They knew 

firing a bullet-shaped rocket to the moon

wouldn’t get us there. They knew there probably

wasn’t snow on the moon. They knew 

mushrooms probably didn’t grow 

in the caverns on the moon.

They knew there were probably no moon people.

Now, more than half a century since the moon’s mysteries

have been dispelled, it sits, a particularly unscenic rock,

like a dingy Nixon-era tourist attraction somewhere 

in Nebraska, covered in footprints and fading flags.

But we also know now that the moon is the result 

of a collision between Earth and some other planet,

dust of our dust, shard of our shard, and from here,

the winter moon is still bright and silver, and the 

summer moon is warm and golden, 

and still, we photograph it, and we paint it, 

and we conjure gods from it, and across 1,000 miles

you and I text each other to ask, 

Have you seen the moon tonight? 

And even when you say, No, it’s overcast here,

we can still, for a moment, walk together

with the Selenites 

through lunar snowfall.

Lauren Scharhag is the author of fourteen books, including Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press) and Languages, First and Last (Cyberwit Press). Her work has appeared in over 100 literary venues around the world. Recent honors include the Seamus Burns Creative Writing Prize, two Best of the Net nominations, and acceptance into the 2021 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com