How many lives can you live?

I see the moon

the moon sees me

the moon sees somebody

that I don't see

God bless the moon

and God bless me

and God bless the somebody
that I don't see

If I get to heaven

before you do

I'll make a hole

and pull you through

and I'll write your name

on every star

and that way the world

won't seem so far

The astronaut will not be at work today.
He has called in sick.

He has turned off his cell phone,
his laptop, his pager, his alarm clock.

There is a fat yellow cat asleep on his couch,
raindrops against the window

and not even the hint coffee
in the kitchen air.

Everybody is in a tizzy.

The engineers on the fifteenth floor have
stopped working on their particle machine.

The anti-gravity room is leaking,
and even the freckled kid with glasses,

whose only job it is to take out the trash
is nervous, fumbles the bag,

spills the banana peel and a paper cup.
Nobody notices.

They are too busy re-calculating
what this will mean for lost time.

How many galaxies
are we losing per second?

How long before the next rocket
can be launched?

Somewhere an electron
flies off its energy cloud.

A black hole has erupted.

A mother finishes setting
the table for dinner.

A "Law and Order" marathon is starting.
The astronaut is asleep.

He has forgotten to turn off his watch
which ticks like a metal pulse

against his wrist.
He does not hear it.

He dreams of coral reefs and plankton.

His fingers find the pillow cases,
sailing masts.

He turns on his side, opens his eyes once.

He thinks that scuba divers must have
the most wonderful job in the world,

so much water to glide through.

Thank you.

When I was little,

I could not understand the concept
that you could only live one life.

And I don't mean this metaphorically --

I mean I literally thought
that I was going to get to do

everything there was to do
and be everything there was to be.

It was only a matter of time.

And there was no limitation

based on age or gender or race
or even appropriate time period.

I was sure that I was
actually going to experience

what it felt like to be a leader
of the civil rights movement,

or a ten-year-old boy living on a farm
during the dust bowl.

or an emperor
of the Tang dynasty in China.

My mom says that when people asked me
what I wanted to be when I grew up,

my typical response was
princess, ballerina, astronaut,

and what she doesn't understand is that

I wasn't trying to invent
some combined super-profession.

I was listing things I thought
I was going to get to be,

a princess and a ballerina and an astronaut,

And I'm pretty sure the list
probably went on from there.

I usually just got cut off.

It was never a question of if I was going to get to do something,