Space
To the moon and beyond with poets Colleen Gibbons, Mark MacAllister, and Ruth Mota.
TRANSCRIPT
Before we go on, I wanted to tell you that the biggest writers’ conference in the country is going to be in Baltimore in early March, and Passager is part of it. If you’re attending the AWP conference, please stop by Passager’s table in the exhibit hall and book fair, Table 538. You’ll probably run into various Passager staffers and writers there; we’d love to meet you in person! And even if you’re not attending the conference, if you live in the Baltimore area, we hope you’ll join us Friday night, March 6, at the Pratt Street Ale House, where several writers from our most recent issue will be reading their work. You can find more specific information about that reading on our website, www.passagerbooks.com.
For most of human existence, most people believed that that the earth was the center of the solar system and the universe, that the sun and the planets and the stars revolved around the earth. That changed in the early 1500s when astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus theorized that the sun and not the earth was the center of our solar system, that the earth circled around the sun. Copernicus was born Feb. 19, 1473. About 500 years later, almost to the day, on Feb. 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to circle the earth in a space ship. Seems like as good a reason as any to read some pieces about how the objects and ideas about space are part of our everyday lives.
Colleen Gibbons said she wrote this next poem after standing on the beach watching the beauty, but then realizing she was really seeing ships and not stars. She said, “The “stars of my childhood” refers to a Hart Crane line, ‘There are no stars to-night But those of memory . . .’ because the way the sky looked in my childhood is lost to me.” She said, “Of course, the gauze and question asking and pure darkness all refer to damage, as do the scars and stains. We are the ones with the dizzying cosmology, and I really wonder if we are capable of helping ourselves. Not unless we see.” Here’s Colleen’s poem “Assateague Night.”
Standing on the beach
on the moonless night,
I see trawlers’ lights strung
like golden pearls on the dark sea,
and stars as bright as the stars
of my childhood
when we could still get glimpses
of the Northern Lights.
I see the Milky Way,
like gauze across the sky,
and the question asking Big Dipper,
and I can’t help noticing
how much flying light is in the sky.
First, I thought they were
as beautiful as fireflies.
I accepted them as part
of the pure darkness,
but they are not.
I accepted bottom-scraping trawlers
as beads on the horizon,
but they are not.
There were no planes the days after 9-11,
no white scars on azure.
Even the last hidden tribes
of the Amazon have no pure sky.
They must have a dizzying cosmology.
We leave careless stains wherever we go.
We cannot seem to help ourselves.
Colleen Gibbons’s poem “Assateague Night” from Passager’s Winter 2014 issue.
Mark MacAllister said he’s generally not a fan of spring, but one warm March day when he went to what he called “the mailbox moon,” his poem easily evolved. “The 31 Moons of March.”
Geese moon frogs moon
moon of a porch door left open overnight
moon of roadside redbud and wisteria
moon the campfire rises at
meteortail moon
airplane shadow on the clouds moon
the first violin’s nod to the cellist moon
deer on hind legs tonguing the birdfeeder moon
squirrel gnawing at a skull bleaching white moon
shine on the trailer hitch moon
moon one can navigate the woods by moon
moon of dampstacked potting soil bags
moon of the redwood bench
moon of rakes leaned against the shed
electric fences turned back on moon
water finally in the creek moon daffodils moon
moon of the shedding ponies
year’s first warm walk to the mailbox moon
reservoir moon climb into the kayak moon
coyote possum blacksnake fox raccoon bobcat tracks moons
corncrib moon springhouse moon
moon barely through the square cloth curtain in the attic window
From Passager’s 2023 Poetry Contest issue, Mark MacAllister’s poem “The 31 Moons of March.”
Ruth Mota said that her poem “Beyond” was inspired by watching her granddaughter
sleep when she came to visit them. She said, “I imagined her soul-flight from her bed, through our forest and into the starry night.”
Beyond this bed
beyond this old house
beyond the shedding redwoods
and the peeled madrone,
beyond the mating calls of crickets
and semen scent of tanoak,
into the skirts of Pleiades,
up the handle of the dipper
and through that black hole
where her fear lies shivering
she arcs in slumber
like an asteroidal bee gone to gather stardust
to repollinate her life
with the stuff that made her.
Ruth Mota’s poem “Beyond” from Passager Issue 69, the 2020 Poetry Contest issue.
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For Christine, Rosanne, Mary, Asher, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.
