Spacemen Specimen

On this planet we hadn’t yet saddled,

a blanket of craters extended

to a too‐near horizon. We had

the just lights of science within us

as we pulled him from the foxhole like an ingrown hair.

He was difficult to see straight, slipping

from our vision’s center, but we

were on a mission, full of orders. I remember

the trail his passing left: thick milk

that smelled of pecan pie, of my partner’s

first wife’s shampoo. We spilled it behind us

as we threaded him from crater to empty crater.

I caught a sense of legs, moving

in unison. He never spoke

in words, and we learned that to hold his arms

was to hold a breach of dust—gently, gently.

We thought we seemed like sun gods to him,

and his trembling some kind of worship.

And the milk dripped from his fingers

as if crushed from foreign stones.