Men Walking on the Moon, 50th Anniversary
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
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