For my grandfather

When i say that he drew
the maps to the moon
i mean,
that he drew the maps
to the moon

He pulled his hands like lightning
from the river of his little town
in missouri; from the ancient
hands of cattle drivers and earth scrapers

At first he
charted a path across the sky; 1952
in a small plane that rocked with the wind
and bounced his riddled paper map off his lap
his folded link to the world scratched
in ink and parchment, (global positioning systems:
just a gleam in a computer’s eye, and the dull
drone of Alexa’s voice, nowhere to be heard)
Navigating over south korea at midnight,
flying, soaring,
searching in the darkness; with only
the light of the moon to guide him

Years later he pulled his hands
towards the moon again:
December 24, 1968, Apollo’s first mission –
charting a path, not across the sky but through it;
to the silver stone stuck in our orbit
– pushing through the atmosphere
grafting an image we cannot see
spinning it towards us with a gravity
we cannot anticipate
But that we reach towards: like a rocket,
like an anchor, like a dream
like a date recorded on a map
framed in your granddaughter’s room
one day in the future 50 years past ;
Time, not like an arrow,
but like a set of airplanes in the dark
searching for tiny lights on the horizon
to lead your way

When your eyes
peeled like a cat, and your fingers
traced lines in a language
you knew how to speak
When the air
was just an object to be bargained with
when Space was just a lack of light;
all that black, just a color to fly through

When the map was just a
sketch, a blueprint to draw with angled pencils
and curved lines – an art, or
a craft;
a cartography of imagination
We learned how to pull ourselves there – past where the
light would lead us, grasping towards
the hand of the unknown
like a navigator
Seeing
in the dark

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