Let's Take a Space Walk

by Veronica K.

Just imagine. We are in a spacecraft 200 miles above Earth, orbiting our beautiful blue-marble planet at a speed approaching 18,000 miles per hour. Inside the spacecraft, we float in a state of seeming weightlessness unless we use restraints or seat belts. When we prepare for a space walk outside the spacecraft-- more like a space float-- we wear pressure suits and carry an oxygen supply for breathing. On March 18, 1965, a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union made the very first space walk, floating outside a tiny spacecraft as it passed in orbit over Siberia. Later that year, Ed White became the first American to perform a space walk as his Gemini IV spacecraft passed over the Indian and Pacific Oceans.  

Today, Poetry on Parade celebrates the anniversary of the first space walk with poems from And Then There Were Eight: Poems about Space by Laura Purdie Salas. You can find this book-- and other out-of-this-world poetry collections-- in the LMC at 811. Are you ready for a little Extravehicular Activity? It's also known as EVA... that's astronaut talk for space walk! 

Space Walk? 

Drifting

No springy step,

No ground beneath my boots--

I float throughout a black, silent

Space "walk" 

On July 21, 1969, 600 million people on Earth watched astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon.  It was indeed “one small step for man… one giant leap for mankind." The moon has no wind or rain or stormy weather to erase those famous footprints...

On the Moon 

No rains fall

No winds gust

A human footprint

Fixed in dust

Hours on hours

Days on days

Our magic landing

Stays and stays  

Lost in Space 

There once was a man on the moon

Who let go of his birthday balloon

     "It's drifting away!"

     He cried in dismay

And he looked for it all afternoon 

We like this lunar limerick! And we like The Man in the Moon, too.  Dark lowland "seas" and lighter highlands on the moon's surface form the features of his smiling full-moon face.  And that, Poetry Paraders, is far out!