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Somerville poet Michael Steffen writes:  “This poem makes a nod to the 50th anniversary of the first moonwalk which took place on July 20, 1969.”

The Astronaut

Michael Steffen

Buzz Aldrin
the second human
to walk on the moon—

his mother’s maiden name
was Moon, if that doesn’t stop you.

This registered enthusiastically
in the hype leading up to the voyage

of the first moonwalk in 1969
which was so unthinkable
it took buildings full of scientists
in white shirts and red ties
in front of monitors to think it through.

There were even jokes about
how many of these NASA scientists
it took to screw a light bulb in.

But Marion Moon coughed
one evening a year or so before the voyage
and nobody mentioned her name much again

until sometime after
the boys were brought home

not that anything about this mission
could have been left to superstition,

not a hand’s breadth left to chance
in the whole world.

— Michael Steffen

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