Moon Tree Experiment, Apollo 14 (1971), and: The Farmhouse, the Old Barnin the Frame, Faceless Animals in Soft Focus

Moon Tree Experiment, Apollo 14 (1971)

It feels like a secret, thumbing the small worlds,such gloss to be measured, stretched

to hubris or heroism. No measurable differencedetected: these seeds, gentlemen, our seeds.

Slipped into supplies, cycled through atmosphere,a nesting doll nestled to the grand plan: space —

a supplement to the needs of man, sidepiece,glowing extra moon. A stratum of stars, gentlemen —

a virgin planet; except, yes, she’s been in our orbit,belittled, pulling dirty tides, contaminating shores

certain to be fertile. A new void, another nothingto grow again, another chance at emptiness, another

abyss to forest with our fine chins first. Upright pine,popular for its adaptability. Do not be dismayed.

Gentlemen, this is not our failure — we took thesebeginnings out of their dirt, ascended them to star-flight —

seeds so we could froth in our farming, a solar stretchingbeyond this softening soaked mess. Gentlemen, we did

not grow bigger, but better; better is an imaginationwe shook of its soil and slit, and entered.

The Farmhouse, the Old Barnin the Frame, Faceless Animalsin Soft Focus

Oh sure, the pink slip, the lamb’s tongue — littlerougher than when I reached for its shape. A poem

does that — packs in the pastoral to moment,blazes an erasure of the dried whey protein

feeding the creature, asks you to think of a motherin a negative shape, feel the process of death

as a child, which is to say, somewhere else and notany battered twine that touches you. In the corner —

look — that’s the filter I want to frame all the iPhonepics I take back home: saturated nostalgia but the cold

light to tell you that I see something else,an understanding that I eat without consequence

but its OK because I caressed the withers of sheepor cows or whatever, that I knew where their slaughter

lived. My apartment has plants in it. I’m still a farmer.My moon metaphors work with the almanac, that cold

light, that speculative distance tautening disgustand reverence. But — look — so cute, so cauterized.