For the Man on the Moon

“By the middle of the twentieth century in Europe and North America a massive change had taken place: the father was working, but the son could not see him work” (Robert Bly, Iron John).

Stepping away from Father’s Day, I can’t help but cry a little. When the weekday returns, how many fathers will be sucked into work and expelled as air? How many children will struggle to hold him again?

When we’re young, we see our parents with the brightest eyes. Many parents seem to miss this brightness, this unspotted love, a light that fades with age. I imagine this light is much like a flame: it must be fed. But in the parent’s absence, it crawls into itself and shrinks. Darkness gathers, and “a hole appears in the son’s psyche.” The father’s face, once aglow, is obscured in shadow.

Who’s there? the child wonders. I don’t know you.

The moment before this turn is my focus. What works in the son of a half-lit father? How much of the darkness do they credit their father? How much do they blame themselves? We see a version of this tension in Cesar Vallejo’s Distant Footsteps (abridged):

My father sleeps. His August countenance
reveals a peaceful heart;
he's so sweet now... 
If there's any bitterness in him, it'll be me. 

And if there's anything broken this afternoon,
anything that bends and creaks, 
it's two old white paths, curving away. 
Along them goes my heart on foot.

Only for a moment do we see Vallejo’s father wake, and still, in that moment, his father does not gather near to feed the flame. In that dimness, Vallejo can only watch his father and judge the strength of his own flame.

My father wakes, he ponders
the Flight into Egypt, that still unhealed farewell.
He's so close now; 
if there's any distance in him, it'll be me.

Adam Elsheimer, Flight into Egypt, 1609 (moon detail)

With that in mind, I was moved to write this story. I just happened to find the poem and song along the way. The song You’re Not Really There is an edit of Kansas’s The Presence of Absence.

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My Father Worked in Secret

My father worked in secret. Where the eye had married the New Moon, he labored. Covered in dust, he returned from work. You could only see him — his olive-colored skin — in slivers, ribbons of earth made known by the slow fall of sweat. They wandered like rivers in search of the ocean.

Striped and unrolled on the stone-colored couch, he seemed at peace. Tired and alone, but at peace. He looked just like that tiger we saw at the zoo, Ashwatthama, old and enclosed. We never saw him eat. He’d only ever wander by the windows and lay on his rock. This one doesn’t hunt, I thought. He’s barely a tiger!

But not my father. He works on the moon; he told me so himself. I’m not too sure what he does there, though. I tried asking, but he doesn’t say much.

What are you making up there?

Ah, I don’t know. I just do the scaffolding. Something about energy.

Do you like it in space?

It’s alright. Hard to move in those suits, though. They’re stiff, and they’re heavy. But the worst part is wearing that helmet, can’t even touch your own damn face. What’s that, you got a runny nose, an itchy face, sweat in the eye? Don’t matter — helmets on!

Oh… so it’s not so fun on the moon.

It’s not all bad. Everything’s lighter out there, that’s a relief. Everything’s light.

I left breakfast by my father’s side before leaving for school that day. And underneath the plate, a secret letter…

I came home to an empty plate. The holographic Saturn sticker I used to seal my note remained unbroken. I knew I should have used the moon, but it felt like a sticker for kids. You’re out of this world, it read. Not fit for a man.

Later that night, I looked up at the man on the moon and knew… no one was watching.

Father is a substance
Like salt, like groundwater
Growing smaller in silence.
Church bells drown
in the chattering trees,
And the song disappears
in the dancing.

Don’t look back, I’m starving.

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For another post on fathers

And another post with poem and song