Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first liquid-fueled rocket launch.
I walk the grey dust where their footprints remain,
Pressed into silence, preserved without rain.
The shadows lie long in this airless light,
Yet something familiar steadies me tonight.
Apollo came first with a single nation’s pride,
A Roman name carried on a Cold War tide.
Its courage was real, but its vision was small,
A triumph for some, not a future for all.
Artemis rises with a broader aim,
Not conquest, not rivalry, not glory or fame.
A mission shaped by many voices and views,
A future imagined by all we include.
And we follow the dreamers who gazed from below,
Who saw in that lantern a place we might go.
They pictured its valleys, imagined its plains,
Gave substance to longing that language constrains.
From poets who whispered of journeys untold,
To thinkers who mapped it in silver and gold,
To children who pointed and claimed it as ours,
Their visions still rise with the dust of these hours.
We walk in the footsteps of those who first dreamed flight,
From watchers of tides to keepers of ancient night.
From minds who traced how the planets would roam,
To builders of engines that carried us from home.
The ones who saw futures in fire and flight,
Their courage and craft shape our path through this light.
Their questions became the foundations we use,
A legacy guiding the journey we choose.
The Earth hangs distant, a fragile sphere,
A reminder of everything we hold dear.
Borders vanish when seen from this place,
Revealing one planet, one human race.
We walk by knowledge that time cannot sever,
By lessons learned from Apollo’s endeavour.
Their boldness lit the path we now choose,
A path where no one is asked to lose.
This dust recalls the stories we share,
From Africa’s first watchers of the night air,
Reading the heavens in patterns of fire and stone,
Long before empires claimed the sky as their own.
Here too, we adapt, we endure, we belong,
Sometimes in silence, sometimes in song.
A chorus of humans beneath a stark sun,
Continuing a journey the first steps begun.
Let shadows drift freely across the old regolith;
Earthlight will guide us far better than myth.
Its glow is a promise no darkness can shun:
That we shape our tomorrow by standing as one.
Author’s Note: this poem is companion to A Distant Sun.
This blog ©2026 Geoff Allshorn, with some editorial and artistic assistance from Deep AI and CoPilot AI. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.