Moon Rock

Moon Rock

A cuticle of
new white moon swings in the black
January sky.
Just last week I touched the moon -
or rather, a slice of moon:

hard, black, warm, smooth, cut,
a granite pebble you might
pick up on a beach
and carry in your pocket.
Through the glass case with open

sides I poked my hand,
stroked with index finger, a
meeting like a kiss
with long-missed lips. The rocket
Saturn V, which took men there

and brought rock back, hung
huge, thirty six storeys long
above me; retired,
a twentieth century
Tyrannosaurus Rex,

the dream of a race
who believe they can achieve
anything: suspend
satellites in space, clone humans,
colonise planets, defeat

distance forever.
I stamp out the cold and watch that
ice- quiet, luminous disc
of rock, turn over two hundred
thousand miles away.