Moon Talk

Steve Davenport

“I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.”

—Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Here on the moon things are boring.

Gray as dumbbells or November,

as snow chains or the machete

I forgot at home. Never mind

what alone is like with no doors

and no walls for them. Never mind

how I got here. Here on the moon

even the stars, stripped of story,

flatten the sky. Here on the moon

there are no branches for swinging,

no two roads to choose between. Here

on the moon, dear diary, there’s no

diary. Here on the moon I eat,

I wait, I shit, I sleep. Mostly

I mind my mind. Here on the moon

I keep both moon and before-moon

because here-moon is life without

and before-moon was life among.

Because minding is memory.

Here’s one. It was June or July

and sandlot baseball. We were ten

and technicolor, playing rough lords

of rule out under the hard sun,

inventing scuffle day by day.

And there was this almost blind kid

who stood along the fence and watched.

Or listened. Sometimes he rested

his head on his arms. The fact is

I was right-handed and I swung

the bat that day. It was July

and we were ten or eleven

and I swung hard. Here on the moon

there’s no dear diary and the pull’s

different. Mind is the only book.

I swung at the sun or the moon

and it slipped. The bat slipped. It flew

like a shot bird, a downed missile.

It was July and we were ten

(maybe twelve). The point is, that bat,

it head-slapped the almost blind kid

who waited for things at the fence,

third-base line. I was right-handed,

so that was where the bat flew. Shot.

I don’t know what he waited for

at that fence, why I swung so hard,

except July, the sun, the moon,

machete. The almost blind kid,

he wasn’t supposed to be there.

Someone said that. He went away,

someone said, after that. Gray

like the moon or my machete.

I never heard him talk, not once,

and sometimes life is so boring

it hurts. Here on the moon mind is

the only book. Here on the moon

the dust smells like gunpowder

and I keep my mind best I can.

You could hit a ball a long way

here on the moon. The moon’s like that.