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Alien to Us
H. Stanbrough

They donned the suits, did Shepard, Grissom, Armstrong
and all the others deemed to fly the heavens,
screamed across the atmosphere to break
the bowl and dance in weightlessness and awe.
They orbited a toy earth and saw
the frailties of this world flung farther out,
assailed the moon and further scarred its pock
marked surface with the flag of aliens.

And what of us who stood upon the earth,
who gawked, as primitives at a shooting star,
and wondered at the works of NASA’s men?
We stretched the truth, connected ourselves to them,
proclaimed that they and we were of one cloth.
Why, even Armstrong named his own “small step”
a “giant leap for mankind.” How godly of him,
knowing we could only stare and dream.