Moon dust never settles. Once set in motion, it stays in motion, a legacy of lunar missions. Neil Armstrong felt guilty about leaving footprints, would have gone back and erased them if he could. After the fact, he understood how the moon was changed forever—the arrogance of that. The rovers, the blast-offs. Now moon dust dogs our future, interfering with satellite communications. Still, there’s no sense of the moon as sacrosanct, no one making amends. If ceremonies began today and continued until the end of time, would that be enough?

new moon night
the Pleiades
shine me home

Cynthia Anderson

has ten poetry books in print, most recently The Missing Peace (Velvet Dusk Publishing, 2021). Her poems frequently appear in journals and anthologies, including Spillway, Crab Creek Review, Apercus, Askew, San Pedro River Review, Mojave River Review, The Coil, and Split Rock Review, among others. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. In 2020, she took up short-form poetry and has been exploring haiku, senryu, cherita, and related forms.

Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens (Green Poet Press). She makes her home in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park.

Author’s website: www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com