In Case of Falling Astronauts Break Glass

I.

o heavenly desert for a wandering tribe, nazareth to astronauts;
cradle of prophets with mirrored faces, our mystics of absolute zero,
striding through hells of kelvin heat or leaping lead-footed for joy.

we knew no domes of glass nor wise antennaed
mayors would meet our traveling boys, flown so far
from the roiling blue, flung so far into darkness and dust.

but if a desert, still a place of birth, you anvil moon: like silver
minted fresh, we’d shine our lives by the pure silent hammers of sol.
this was our dream, our all-american dream of astronauts

grave and poetic: faces full of infinity, minds on plans
for compassionate cities, angelic hands at work in the vine-
yards of science. the rocket packs and rayguns were toys,

dolls in the hands of scheming boys we never thought they’d keep.
what we were after, as always, was space: another place to go
when nowhere was left
a heavenly desert to a wandering tribe,
second bethlehem to a dream.

II.

I wonder what plagues we gave to the Indians of the Moon,
I struggle to remember which treaties we broke with the Lunar Sioux,
the precise year of that famous ambush so successfully sprung by
the cavalry of the American Third Orbital Marines upon the Lakota
living by the shores of the Sea of Tranquility.
And I forget exactly how many chiefs we lashed to the coils
of fusion drives, or swung from rocket gantries
or tumbled into void with a one two three.

I get all the dates mixed up, but from where I’m standing
I can still smell the silicate smoke of tipis burning on lunar prairies.

III.

When I still played hopscotch,
when i knew just how to throw the stone
and what these lines are for,
I read about Laika, the dog in space,

How the Russians loved their doggy cosmonaut
(a snapshot from some grade school primer:
white coated men and a scrappy mutt
with a lolling tongue) and how she loved her cozy Sputnik, just enough room for her race.
I imagined the husky steering her tiny craft:
Adroit Captain Laika, the dog between worlds,
equal parts Egyptian goddess and loyal pet;

the constellation, drawn in the sky with
stars of chalk, the constellation given life,
the Hunter’s Dog unleashed to gambol and howl
fully enfleshed in the backyards of night.

When I still played hopscotch, and knew
the counting rhymes, and how to get through the game
without hitting the lines, I read about Laika:
but not how her husky fur must have burned

in a blaze when her tiny cage returned to earth,
nor a word for her terrified yawp as the Sputnik
crashed through a ceiling of air, splashed down
in the southernmost part of the Indian Sea.

I know she died before I was born, and how.
But I learned it late, and now I call her:
here girl, come on down now and lick my hand;
and brief me on dreams brought low,
dogs in space, these chalk marks
whose use I used to know.