First Colony’s Fate

[Photo by Apollo 17]

dusty lunar soil,
seeds, water, sunshine, and time:
Harvest Moon achieved

gray Linne Crater
pocked by one hundred windows
family homesteads

at crater’s center
sundial gnomon counts the hours
hundreds every “day”

Moon-born five-year-old:
look up, she giggles, that’s Earth,
all that blue — all water!

new hope, only home
too willowy for Earth-g
what makes a human?

harvest fails again
impossible colony
orders: go Earthside

not the Moonish way
to cut off debate, but . . .
. . . three Lunar days

dissenters unite
craters become foxholes —
free Luna or die!

hasty interments
moonsuits salvaged, naked dead
someday . . . monuments

tall sundial gnomon
counting names inscribed in dust
the Moon’s memorial

— by Sue Burke
[also posted to

fridayhaiku ]