The Moon Landing

In East Tennessee

College students eager to impress

Or desperate for adventure

Will defy curfews

Take secret dates into

Packed cars and drive

Down back roads

Through dark woods

To trespass the secured fence

Of a local mine

Whose powdered surface of

Silent sand and stacked mounds

Glowing with unearthed minerals

In the lunar light of darkness

Resemble a downed moon.

They must sneak in

Become aliens themselves

To walk upon that world

Inverted beings below a natural satellite

Pretending to be

No longer of this earth

Bouncing to mimic lost gravity

Speaking as if in a vacuum.

With the stars at their head

They place their feet deep

In the dust leaving their mark

Then sit on distant hills

Like starry voyagers

Where lovers place their hands

Together as gently

As the moon landing

Hearing their own mission control

Guiding them

Nearer release

For it is here

In the dust strewn hours

Before class or the waking sun

They finally allow themselves

To become explorers