Footstep
Footstep
Across the gray and stillborn face
Earthlight beams in shafts of blue
To follow sunlight into plains
And ancient valleys in hide and see
Played upon this place,
A million years or more,
Then bends around horizon’s sloping line
To reach into the golden dawn
It ever seeks just beyond
The plane where light and dark
Never meet.
The hills and glens lie mute, still
As on the day they came to be,
Watching the ever shifting
Earthrise set against of sky of ebony
While not one particle
Moves from the place of its birth
In harmony with particles identical
In nature and in face and they,
Inertia’s handiwork, rest beneath the hands
Of light that run across this silent solitude
Without the help of winds
That gird their neighbor’s waist.
The eons look like eternity - nothing changes
In the rhythm of inertia’s
Ever watchful eye – no life force rising,
Stretching, reaching – the sea tranquility
Does not thunder with perpetuation's swell
And yet, it bears the eagle’s mark –
The first, now everlasting, footstep in a race
So quickly come then gone
And mirrors to empty space the challenge
That gave them flaming wings carrying them
Far beyond their fruitful home to leave a plaque
In the empty dust of eon’s signature.
Dedicate to Apollo 11 7-21-89
Copyright © Sam Kauffman | Year Posted 2020
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