Is it the moon, is there even a moon?
Or might it be the reflection of Lights
Glinting and shimmering (de/re)fracting
Off of thee Lab Tech’s Lenses; if
We are a petri dish they use their microscopes and check in
Every 30ish days. If we are
Truly light years away perhaps
Their telescopes are shining examples
Beacons which illustrate to other-than-Human life what our far
Away world Looks like, exploration
Of worlds and life far removed
From us and our peering in
Every 30ish days. Might storytellers
With their cameras just photographing
Us the-the… stars as the Flash or
Are their filmmakers just recording
“reality”-for-T.V. where
Every 30ish days they yell roll camera or cut and again
The stars provide lighting… could [our] Shakespeare
Have been right in assuming that our world(s)
Are nothing but stage(s)?
My hope is that the moon
Is not a magnifying lens in
The hands of a celestial child
Who is unloved, unwanted, y en dolor; for
Every 30ish days that child
Cold focus a ray of cosmic light
To vaporize and end everything we
Know…
But would it be any less
To be treated like Bugs under
A magnifying glass/lens, if that child
Understood what we do to y(our)
Own planet, communities, and each other
A “space lazer” would be
A quick, kind, ending, a Flash Point…
Another Flash of Light
Shooting in all directions inspiring
Stories about that glint across
The Blackness of speculative endless space(timemattering)
But might, just might the moon or what
We preserve as a/thee moon is just
A mirror that asks and invites us
All humans and other-than-humans to pause
And reflect to be inspired and motivated
To do, to be, to… too… (just breath) to
(un/re)invent ourselves
Every 30ish days,
A sphere, a bright hole in space
A portal like a sliding-glass door
Might need to, want to, be privileged to
Step across, through, and over the threshold of this lens
As it gives way to a portal where we see ourselves
How we might be and not as we are?
Every 30ish days. I look up
And always end up lookin’ inwards
Allowing the moon to see me… all of me
…Every 30ish days, unless you don’t believe in rounding up, it is every 29.5ish days (oh, the scientist in me, smh, had to look!?)
—
David Riera, an Afro-Hispanic combat veteran, is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Instruction, which means he writes a lot y no para divertirse. David co-creates, supports, and stewards learning environments in formal K-12 schools and collegiate spaces. His true knack lies in informal STE(A)M (which combines STEM with Agriculture, Arts, and even Advocacy) curricula which bring learners y communidad to connect with natural laboratories like coral reefs, apiaries, mangrove forests, farms, and parks.
