Summer dies shrouded in the brittle body
of a monarch butterfly stamped into the pavement
like a brilliant piece of trash. Rain beats grass
to mud as Buzz Aldrin’s voice swoops and arcs
through my car’s speakers while he admits
how after the moon landing, in the shadow
of his mother’s suicide, his own life began to
unravel from “the magnificence of Apollo.”
His words fade into a dairy farmer from California
whose voice breaks when he speaks of selling
his beloved cows and losing his family farm
that sits in a green valley where golden rod lights
pastures deep yellow. I can see each tiny flower,
as rain brings me back into my car and through
my blurry windshield, I see a girl running;
her red skirt swirls like a cluster of falling leaves.
Quote taken from “Aldrin Reflects on Life After Moon Mission,” Morning Edition, NPR, July 20, 2009.
Brianna Pike is an associate professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. Her poems have appeared in So to Speak, Connotation Press, Glassworks, Gravel, Heron Tree, and Mojave River Review, among others, and she currently serves as an editorial assistant for the Indianapolis Review. She lives in Indianapolis with her husband and son.