Astronauts said the moon smelled 
like used fireworks.
An aroma of spent gunpowder,
like a sniff of conquest, permeated 
the lunar module on the flight home.
Scientists say moon dust acquired 
a gunpowder odor from lack of oxygen.
No atmosphere on the moon.

Like the way no atmosphere 
makes the sky look black
when you are standing on the moon
in broad daylight.
Imagine the surprise of standing on the moon, 
awash in ice-cold sunlight,
and looking up to see an infinite black sky—

There is your ultimate noir setting—murder 
in broad daylight, under a night sky,
Sam Spade chasing down the trail of spent gunpowder.

In a star-spangled daytime sky 
you would come face-to-face 
with our place in the cosmos.

The moon landing emerged from a decade of division
the struggle for freedom and equality
the struggle to end the war
a generational struggle.
The moon landing itself born of a cold vision, 
of Us versus Them.

The Apollo 11 astronauts studied
paper star charts
and used a sextant to navigate space
like Vasco da Gama
Columbus
Jacques Cartier.
At least there was no one to conquer on the moon.

But it isn’t just the paper maps.
So much of the moon mission was hand-made
like the parachutes—hand-stitched and hand-folded.

But this hand-made, paper chart moon landing,
sixty-six years after the Wright Brother’s flight,
ushered in not a new space age
but the digital age
leading to cell phones and deepfake.

Maybe the whole Apollo mission 
was more steampunk prequel 
than noir— both handmade 
and microchip driven
with the feel of an urban underground dystopian novel—
post atmosphere.
No wonder people don’t believe 
the moon landing was real.

My father walked from our row house
to the RCA plant
where he worked on one of the moon cameras.
My father knew the smell of burnt things
but he believed in the moon camera.

From the cooling rock of this earth, life arose—
From a scrim of stardust, the leavings of angels,
to swim, fly, burrow
photosynthesize and eat—
tumbling from innocence 
to awkward self-consciousness.
The moon acquired myth and gender  
as it waxed and waned across the sky.

We humans philosophize, dream of flight,
and sometimes practice non-violent resistance.

My father was a low-paid technician
helping to construct a slow-scan camera
taking pictures of pictures sent from the moon
and converting them to a television signal
beamed into living rooms
for a world momentarily united—
moonstruck, deep in its star-bones.
July 20, 1969