This is one of my oldest extant poems kindly published by John Hall in the first edition of Citizen 32.

 

 Ten Years After (1979)

 

I am bobbing in a tiny boat upon a velvet ocean

Above me the moon smiles down

I now know there is no moon rabbit

And they know it is not made of cheese.

 

It is merely rock and dust, lit by the sun’s aura

Its smile merely craters ranged across its surface

The stars observed it all, impervious

To the puny meddling and jettisoned hardware.

 

We are somewhere in the South China Sea

And those same stars are now our company

Our vessel suspended by invisible thread

Rising and falling between sea and sky.

 

It is calm, nothing but the slap of sea on wood

And the occasional swish of a surfacing shark

Phosphorescence twinkles in the moonlight

As our rudderless craft drifts to the moon’s whim

 

Silence on board, even the children understand

But now and then a wheeze, a rasp, a cough, a whimper

I stare skywards and guess our direction

Orbiting satellites remind me we are not alone.

 

Things could be worse, they often were

We are drifting towards freedom, under a smiling moon

Three lives lost a small price to pay

Three drops in a vast and endless ocean.

 

I remember ’69, the world was different then

We learned to ask for KFC washed down with Bud

We stared at flickering TVs to salute those grainy heroes

As they destroyed our myths

 

I look at my huddled family

And turning towards the moon mouth a prayer

“Oh mother moon guide us to a new life.

May our voyage be as blessed as theirs.”