My note is sealed in a plastic tube,
the barrel of a ball point pen,
whose openings I have melted shut in fire
and buried behind the garage,
a message to an unknown era,
to say, “We are reaching for the moon.”
At Kiddush Levanah, the blessing on the moon,
under its visible crescent or almost full arc,
we leap skyward three times and declare,
“Just as I cannot touch the moon,
so may my enemies be unable to touch me.”
What, then, does it mean, to have actually
reached the moon? — Not me, but one of my race —
and even to have brought back moon rocks, moon grit,
moon dust (we cannot call it “earth”),
an actual piece of the lunar landscape?
Even as I can now touch the moon,
can my enemies now touch me?
The Poem won an honorable mention in the 2015 Voices Israel Reuben Rose Poetry Competition.
