Step

One of few pictures of Neil Armstrong on the Moon. Taken by Buzz Aldrin, July 20, 1969. Credit: NASA.

— for Neil, with thanks

A step
before I was born
led to another

and another

until a path
wore through the book
on our shelf

and I sat on the floor
with black-and-white
family portraits

of the moon

as if reliving
a vacation
to the beach

this intimacy
treading
into the night
when I trained
my binoculars
on a black sea
stripped of childhood
haze–

on a suspended
rock, falsely lit

and somewhere
in my focus:
a step.

• Apollo 11
• astropoetry
• moon
• Neil Armstrong
• poetry