By Chanukya
The hush is endless,
a silence older than oceans,
yet it bends, trembling,
beneath one small press of weight.
Grain by grain,
the dust remembers nothing—
no river’s rush, no bird’s wing—
only the imprint of a stranger,
a visitor wrapped in white,
bearing the breath of Earth.
The flag stiffens,
its colors fierce against the void,
but beyond its stripes and stars,
waits a shared astonishment:
that a creature born of soil and salt,
has stepped upon another world.
What song could rise here?
No wind carries it,
no trees to echo it back.
Only the pulse inside the suit,
the living drum of a heart,
beating louder than galaxies.
We are all there,
in that shadow cast on ash,
in the fragile tether,
between home and this alien night.
Not conquest, not possession,
but the first bridge of wonder,
stretching from Earth’s cradle,
to the silence of forever…
(Poem written for contest – Prompt 10 – “Apollo 11 crew members capture mankind’s first physical brush with the moon, July 1969.”)