Endangered Species: The Moon Poem by Paul Hartal

Endangered Species: The Moon

Rating: 4.0


Dear Moon,
Old faithful friend
of lovers and romantics,
you are our nearest celestial body,
a main distance of 238,857 miles
from Earth,
with a lunar globe diameter
Of 3473 kilometers,
and nevertheless,
we can hide you by a finger
held at arm's length.

Dear Moon,
Only natural satellite of Earth,
You move in a slightly elliptical orbit
With a period of sidereal revolution
In 27 days,7 hours,43 minutes
And 11.5 seconds,
But I still have some concerns
Deep down in my heart.

An untold variety of lunar seas,
oceans, craters and mountains
cover your face,
and, along with the Sun,
You cause the tidal action, too.

And, o, dear Moon,
You are always opaque,
and you are only visible to us,
because the Sun and Earthlight
illuminate your surface.
But this is not a serious problem.

On the other hand,
well, dear Moon,
last night
I was somewhat anxious,
as the shadows were growing
on the ceiling of my room
into strange fairy tales.
So I went carefully to the window
and saw your enigmatic crescent
of your visible face.

And then
I uttered a sigh of relief:
You were still there!

Still my dear Moon,
I read that in time to come
You might be redesigned
And turned into something
entirely different from today.

Blueprints for Lunar settlements
are already in the works
on designers' tables
and in the future
cities built by astronauts
will gyrate and revolve restlessly
in aloof outer space.

And so sooner
than we would think, the night
could be illuminated by artificial light,
emanating from contrived satellites.

And then dear Moon, perhaps,
You will feel that you are
not needed anymore
and on a long white night
You might even decide
to leave us entirely alone,
relocating to another cosmic arena
and becoming less than an illusion
of coded image on the retina.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Anat Tour 06 July 2012

A delightful poem. I really hope the moon will be left alone and will always smile back at Earth.

2 0 Reply
Kevin Patrick 05 July 2012

What an enchanting besieging work, at first I read this as a literal description of the moon, but I can see untertones of something more meaningful then that. The moon inspires great works about love, if we were to loose her what mysteries of the nights would we have to look at, but the distant stars. Great work Paul, much appreciated

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