Why, some say, the moon?

— John F. Kennedy, 1962

Always, it was metaphor, emblem

of our seeking. So why not land

on the Sea of Tranquillity? In 1969

we are a nation at war, even

with ourselves. In photographs

from the launch, you can see

so many ways of seeing, altering

our vision: binoculars, cameras,

sunglasses, a boy with a telescope,

everyone shoulder to shoulder,

gazes upturned to the sky—

the moment’s grand myopia.





There is no strife, Kennedy said, no

prejudice, no national conflict

in outer space as yet. As yet. Even

the photographs seem to show

a nation united, the old divisions

nearly gone from view. How easy it is

to overlook what’s there, to forget

what is not. Even today, they show us

ourselves: as in the image of a man

and woman on a motorcycle, backs to us,

their faces in the side-view mirror—

how, even looking ahead, we carry

a vision of what’s behind us. See it





in the photograph’s middle ground:

a man raises his arm, directs my gaze

to the periphery just coming into focus.

T here, nearly out of the frame, another man

lifts his symbol for the day, as if to carry it

into our future: the Confederate flag

brandished in the electric air.

T hat summer





I am 3, and I am old enough to know

the word nigger; I hear it again and again—

sometimes joined with lover—most places

we go: the grocery store, the movie theater,

whispered in a restaurant on the beach.

In 1969, we are only two years since Loving

v. Virginia struck down the laws against us,

my parents’ marriage; only a year since

my white father fought in a bar when

other servicemen cheered at the news

King had been shot. I can tell you this:





I don’t remember the moon landing,

but maybe it was a day without the word,

a day we went downtown without armor

and my dark-skinned grandmother

tried on hats at the department store.

The day after, the headlines blared unity.

A generous thought, my father once said,

is the idea of justice taking root.

She is farther from us now than then,

our moon, symbol of our seeking,

once seemingly unattainable—that

Sea of Tranquillity—toward which

we set our course, then reached.