Leaf 92 – Reflections
Fifty-six years ago today, Neil
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. Since I was a child, the lunar
landings and NASA’s Apollo missions have always fascinated me. I wrote the
following tanka and haiku as two separate reflections upon the reality of those
missions (trying to imagine what it must have felt like for Armstrong and
Aldrin), and the place of the Moon in different human mythologies. Both East
and West, from the rabbit to the man in the Moon. Thinking of all the times I’ve
looked up at the Moon, in different places and at different times and circumstances
in my life. A silver sixpence shining in the night sky, seen from wherever we
are in the world – in many ways, the Moon unites us. A symbol of peace, forever
unchanging in the dark and noiseless, unbounded void of space – unchanged,
except for those brief moments during the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and
early 1970s. The Moon, of course, is also a significant and recurring motif and
a kigo (season word) in Japanese haikai.
Tranquillity
to magnificent desolation,
two sides of the same coin,
almost the same
– silver moon.
***
Small steps, a leap,
the rabbit becomes a man
– silver moon.
