One poem by David W. Landrum

"EARTHRISE" TAKEN FROM APOLLO,

DECEMBER 24, 1968

We had not imagined swirls:

white clouds like fingers

angel wings and doves

whirlpools of thick mist

sea a living azure

not dead

but lighted sapphire

warm life-bearing flow

water contiguous

with cloud

nor had we thought

we would see swaths of brown

that indicated land

no bright star

no globe set out in space

rather

a living thing

a goddess ringed

with vortexes of white

eddies and currents

peeked above the swath

of barren moon

earth's blue white brown

in a picture frame of dark

Note: On December 24, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8, the second human spaceflight mission in the United States Apollo space program, sent back a photograph of Earth as seen from their obit around the moon. Up to that point no one had seen the Earth as it looked in space. Those, like me, who saw this revelatory photograph were amazed at the sight—and, most of all, at the beauty and delicacy of the planet on which we live.

David W. Landrum’s poetry has been published, most recently, in Angle, Windhover, Antiphon, Measure, and The Literary Bohemian. He teaches English at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan.