Russian Moons

Oh, Sputnik, iron star, keep on playing
that pop tune, spew notes into the ether.
Let your clock-hands glow above mountain ranges,
let midnight be announced form beyond galaxies,
millions of years as the rain traveled across the empty ocean
and out of it steaming stalagmites rose.
Let gastropod shells hum their tale of a time
when the cloud cover began to fray,
when molecules began to form chains.
And crustaceans gnawed messages into stones.
Let them tell how mussels wove armor
around themselves, how they carved
a rock to so resemble a brain.
Oh, Sputnik, iron star, protect our sleep,
sprinkle your rust mixed with snow on these rooftops
as they rise and fall
in the rhythm of breathing.
Light up the streets. Signpost the roads.
Guide the seafarers – as if they ever
needed it – toward the harbor’s photoelectric cells
spilling their honey on the water.
Guide the traveling fair as it proceeds
from town to town, its ferris wheel carried in containers,
dismantled. And guide me
along that track made by the wheels of their carts
past the roundabout creatures, the tiger all swollen in the rain,
to the fragrance of popcorn and spun sugar.

- Olli Heikkonen