Perhaps the Greatest Error

This guy makes is Getting in Buzz Alden’s
Face, or perhaps it’s that he wants Buzz
To admit, to cry, to repent that it’s all been
A joke, a hoax, that Moon stuff, just something
Home made with lights and mirrors; remember
Playing “Space-boy”, your cardboard box lifting off
The living room carpet, and there you go,
The ceiling, the roof, the diminishment of the streets
Through your scissor-cut window, away, away,
Then the corrugated darkness, and stars.

But it’s a cardboard box, and the gravity
Of your parent’s house, where a kid, as we know
Has to snap out of it, sooner or later, or they
Begin to worry about where you’ll land.

So down from the beautiful, silent orbit,
That slow brake called reason, the weight
Of the real world dragging your arms. Come on,

The man insists, like your father’s hand ruffling
Your pillow with a quarter, caught, when all
He wanted was for you to believe, just for a bit
Longer, that that baby tooth of yours called
Beings invisible to your bed, stop lying
And tell us the truth. O, intangible worlds,
An astronaut ignites his fingers, and his fist
Is launched to the chin of the idiot moon.

-To Tracy K. Smith