Skip to main content

poetry Men Walking on the Moon, 50th Anniversary

Hayden Saunier’s poem about the moon walk evokes a hidden memory of wartime trauma.

Men Walking on the Moon, 50th Anniversary

By Hayden Saunier

We were all remembering where

we’d been that night, and if alive, how young

 

we were, when a friend said it was the only time

she ever heard her father talk about the war

 

he’d fought in years before in the Pacific.

That when he saw the first footprints

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

 

deep in lunar dust—how the boots had stamped

themselves down into the soft white surface

 

and no wind stirred— he said: that’s what

the ground was like at Nagasaki when we

 

were sent in afterward. Our boot prints sunk

into ash. Then he said nothing more.

Hayden Saunier’s work has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, and Gell Poetry Award, among others. Her newest book, A Cartography of Home will be published in February 2021 by Terrapin Books. More about her online at www.haydensaunier.com