Spaceships in the Sky

 

The real world fluttered, flickered, warped

At the edges of my vision

Blurred shapes, muffled noises

My only concern, a 19 inch TV screen

The bright, sharp, beautiful colours

Of spaceships

Of the moon

Of Space… 1999

It was set in the future, 

Back then

A future so distant I couldn’t imagine

1999

I’d be a grown up

Like you

Old.

Twenty eight.

Impossible to comprehend

Down in the cellar

You were painting the surface of the moon

A secret

A lunar terrain of wire and plaster

And glue and paper

Maybe four foot square

Made, by you, 

For me

Revealed, one afternoon

Laid out for me to find when I got home from school

Model ships hanging on wires

Above the plaster rocks and cliffs of white

You’d carved the moon into my day

And you hung spaceships in the sky

I was small and so short sighted

I didn’t understand or see what you had made

Didn’t take a moment to feel wonder

Just asked if I needed to tidy all my toys away

Reached out to grasp those

Die cast metal ships

Even as they floated impossibly

Above the kitchen surfaces

Not seeing the now

Preoccupied

I didn’t see your face,

Don’t know if you looked sad, or angry

Disappointed at the distance between

The work put in, 

The joy expected

And the confused, muddled reality

As I gradually realised what you’d made

And you never said what inspired you

To fashion this beautiful thing

For a generally ungrateful child

Or if you did, my ears were not tuned 

To that frequency

But I loved it, that moon

Played with it until the paint wore off

And the wire mesh poked through

The craggy plaster mountains,

A million miles away

Up in my room

I was a kid who worried and dreamed 

And hunched my head down

I could barely see

And worse, 

I didn’t take the time to look

But you created worlds for me

In the dark, in the cellar

As I ignored the here and now

And dreamed of Space 1999

You carved the moon into my days

And you hung spaceships in the sky