Love Affair With The Moon
consider the stars, so small, so unfathomable
so beautiful in the night sky
how do we understnad this love
for what we always see in the starts
what is always just out of reach?
how do we get there?
we go to the moon, and try to learn
we send rockets to Saturn’s moon Titan
to learn what our planet might have been like
when this solar system was created
we want to learn
we want to understand
because we are in love
I think everyone loves the moon
we hear of romance under the moonlight
I remember looking at the moon
through our telescope
when I was 6 years old
and historically, scientifically
I think everyone was transfixed
to their televisions or radios
when man first landed on the moon
there seemed to be a moment of awe
and inspiration, and amazement
when there was that one small step for man
that one giant leap for mankind
scientists have deduced
(in trying to guess how this planet got a moon
and how necessary it is for our weather patterns)
that when the moon was first formed
(one theory was that it was formed
off a rogue planet they call Orpheus)
that the moon was first much, much closer
to Earth when it was first formed than it is today
that it may have been only 14,000 miles away
and not at the current almost 240,000 mile distance it’s at now
astronomers now estimate
that because of gravity’s change
the moon, every year
is a mile and a half farther away from the earth
If you remember the moon looking so big
when you looked at the night sky
when you were little, well
you may have been right
laurie anderson, while studying with NASA
as their artist-in-residence
learned from scientists at NASA during the cold war
and during this country’s desire for nuclear testing
they considered setting off nuclear bombs
on the dark side of the moon
because, you see,
no one sees that side of the moon
and the radiation would be a safe distance from the Earth
when I heard that, I thought:
what would setting nuclear explosions on half of the moon
do to it’s orbit?
what would that do to it’s effect on our weather?
and consider the earthquake that caused
the tsunami in Asia
slowed the rotation of the planet for a second —
so would these explosions on the moon
affect our rotation, or possibly our orbit?
and then I thought:
why would anyone, ever
want to destroy a heavenly body
we so need and don’t know enough about?
why would anyone want to destroy
something that so many people
are so infatuated with
that so many people revere?
astronomy is like a forbidden love affair
something you can never reach
but something you can always admire from afar
something whose constancy can give you hope
even if only when you’re standing outside
in the night and looking up at its perennial beauty
without ever knowing
if you could ever get there
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