Julian, 1969

It was May when you began
to bring the blooming world
into the house.
                You told me
you were bored with your books
about space travel,
that you wanted to watch the bees
shuttle nectar to their hives
instead.
         That was two months before
the moon landing.
                  Your friends
stayed indoors, sat on their feet
in the living room for weeks
waiting for the blast-off
from Cape Canaveral
to broadcast on TV.
                    Why look,
you said, if it wasn’t
close?
      You filled your bookshelves
with backyard treasures
you could hold in your hand:
birds’ eggs, honeycomb,
the exoskeletons of cicadas,
a hummingbird wing
that I admonished you
to throw away.
              I knew
you were very absorbed
when I found a miniature forest
under your bed,
the tips of crepe myrtle branches
upright in sand piles.
                      You even left
a handful of smooth-stemmed roses
on my dresser
(you had picked off the thorns)
and a jar of lightning bugs
for your sister
so that we, too, would know
how to consecrate small things
by looking.
           For your birthday
your grandparents gave you
a pair of binoculars.
                       You ignored them–
thank you, you said, but
your eyes could see close enough
to spot squirrels in the pecan trees
and to catch the crawfish
that scuttled among the waterstones
like the dark center blossom
in Queen Anne’s Lace.
                      On the night
the moonwalkers landed,
you refused to view the gray television
screen.
     You ran out to the hilltop
behind the house
in case their space suits
glowed, and when you saw nothing
you were upset you couldn’t find
those binoculars.
                  In mourning,
you clipped violets from the hillside
and placed them in miniature
bowls of pottery.
                 The petals hovered
so like astronauts
in those terra cotta moons
that you let them float
until they wilted.