Landing Tranquility

Rachel Demma

What were our intentions with the moon? So familiar, its black seas and silver coasts reappear

like a postcard pulled again and again from the back of a dark drawer of night.

It was ridiculous at first, always a chaperone to the oddest couples—the pussy cat and owl, absconding utensils—perhaps swaying slightly and hung at a rakish tilt by a hind-legged kick from the cow.

Once, you looked at the moon during the day and knew it was, after all, a planet, moving on a scientific circuit, busily operating unseen pulleys, officiating tides, ministering insanity.

For a time, it too (poor orb) became worldly. It was our one far thing

that someone saw as small and round, like a medal he should have around his neck.

But nobody forgets the beatitude of the pitted, lonely plain that stretched under the moon’s skies when we were shown each other by ourselves. That must be rare.

Up there now are the golf clubs, the family portrait pressed into Polaroid, a flag, footprints

sloughed off into dust, litter from an inside joke between us and God.

Like a good host, we circle and savor the coquetry of sidelong glances and frequent

absences. Sincerely, we crater lands, blot oceans, and shovel valleys of our own.

Wait until the fall, when the moon will sprawl huge and red on the horizon, almost

unrecognizable. It is mimicking the sun, reminding us that we do not want to arrive there.

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