Today is the first day of the spring semester. As I wonder what this term will bring, I've started thinking a lot about firsts--first day of school, first kiss, first time on a plane, first time jumping out of one, etc. I've had a lot of firsts in my life, so this seems like a fine time to write about them. What first do you remember fondly? Or with great horror? Let's write about firsts.
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll share the results in time for Poetry Friday.
First Men on the Moon
ReplyDelete"The Eagle has landed!"
Apollo 11 Commander Neil A. Armstrong
"A magnificent desolation!"
Air Force Colonel Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr.
July 20, 1969
That afternoon in mid-July,
Two pilgrims watched from distant space
The Moon ballooning in the sky.
They rose to meet it face to face.
Their spidery spaceship Eagle dropped
Down gently on the lunar sand.
And when the module's engines stopped,
Cold silence fell across the land.
The first man down the ladder, Neil,
Spoke words that we remember now--
"Small step for man. . . ." It made us feel
As if we too were there somehow.
When Neil planted the flag and Buzz
Collected lunar rocks and dust,
They hopped like kangaroos because
Of gravity. Or wanderlust.
A quarter million miles away,
One small blue planet watched in awe.
And no one who was there that day
Will soon forget the Moon they saw.
[Note: This poem appeared in my A BURST OF FIRSTS: Poems of Celebration, Penguin/Dial Books for Young Readers, 2000. It was also published in in Lee Bennett Hopkins’ Great Lives poetry anthology (HarperCollins, 1999), and in Cricket Magazine.
Antiphonally:
ReplyDeletePerigee
Last night the moon was so large
I could read the footprints on its face.
Remembering a dinner with Aldrin,
his ego so large around our small table,
and we so in awe, we could only think
over and over and over again,
“He stepped foot on the moon.”
Well, there they are, those footprints,
not spoiling the view, but waving the flag.
I was glad to hear the buzz, the talk,
the ego flap, the big I. He’d earned it.
©2012 Jane Yolen, published Spring 2012 Conclave Literary Magazine
Somewhere
ReplyDeleteSomewhere under the snow
the first seed is dreaming
about sending out the first
small green flag of spring.
—Kate Coombs, 2013
all rights reserved
the flag image for a seedling conjures up one of those things there really isn't a word for (as far as i know): the opposite of a surrender flag.
DeleteAnd by the way, Patrick and Jane, really wonderful poems, and in such different ways. I especially like "wanderlust" and "Will soon forget the Moon they saw" in Patrick's poem and the last line of Jane's. The technology was so limited at that time that it's utterly astonishing they made it there--and back. It would have been astonishing anyway, but all the more so because of what they were working with. I've heard their computer was less sophisticated than one of our cellphones today.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Kate, Patrick and Jane. And boggles the mind to think of 'their computer was less sophisticated than one of our cellphones today.' Whew. Thank goodness for spring, Kate--love your metaphor! Julie
DeleteI'm with Kate, Patrick and Jane. And boggles the mind to think of 'their computer was less sophisticated than one of our cellphones today.' Whew. Thank goodness for spring, Kate--love your metaphor! Julie
Deletetwice-betrayed first
ReplyDeletethe first time
the one I called first
I got lost
my tissue paper heart
fluttering against
papier mache ribs
my cashmere fingertips
fumbling across
a blind terrain of hair
my withered lungs
flapping empty balloons
detached and forgotten
my tongue a salmon
swimming pointlessly
upstream
toward never-before seen
spawning grounds
but it was not
my real first
my real first
got me in trouble
hastily planned
clumsily executed
I stood poised
outside the bathroom door
ready to pounce
when she emerged
a quick peck
a light buss
an impulse
without a hint
of emotion
then came the crying
the separation
the taunting and teasing
playground sequestering
parental conferences
“why did you do it?”
at a loss for words
I shrugged it off
for ten years
until I found
a suitable replacement
I carried that first
that secret shame
twice-betrayed
never forgotten
(I hadn't realized it until I went to save this in my files, but this is also the first poem I've written in 2013!)
Love this, David—so honest & sincere. Great images throughout. Julie
Deletefrom Cityscapes
ReplyDeleteParis
The first time
I saw Paris,
stretched
beneath
the stars—
her spine a row
of streetlamps,
head a clutch
of sky,
shoulders
sheathed in
moon-glow,
breath in wisps
of wine—
I tread her
cobbles lightly,
stroked her
chiseled lime.
Loved this
ancient city,
less human
than divine.
(c) jgk, 2012
http://www.facebook.com/juliekrantzbooks
David, you tell that story in such a fresh way--very poignant! And Julie, I really like "a clutch of sky" and the last several lines.
ReplyDeleteOvulator or Ovulated?
ReplyDelete(or Which Came First?)
If first ever was, or ever will be,
the Lord may know but, Lord, not me.
The illimitable past and the coming mist
seem more Escher stairs than ordered list.
by Terrell Shaw
Love this, Terrell!
DeleteFIRST MEETING
ReplyDeleteI gently brush my fingertips against
This tiny lump of flesh, tracing his
Spiderweb like handprint with my own.
"Hello dear one, I'm your big sister."
(C) Charles Waters 2013 all rights reserved