"EARTHRISE" TAKEN FROM
APOLLO,
DECEMBER 24, 1968
We
had not imagined swirls:
angel
wings and doves
whirlpools
of thick mist
sea
a living azure
not
dead
but
lighted sapphire
warm
life-bearing flow
water
contiguous
with
cloud
nor
had we thought
we
would see swaths of brown
that
indicated land
no
bright star
no
globe set out in space
rather
a
living thing
a
goddess ringed
with
vortexes of white
eddies
and currents
peeked
above the swath
of
barren moon
earth's
blue white brown
in
a picture frame of dark
Note: On December 24, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8, the second
human spaceflight mission in the
United States Apollo space program, sent back a photograph of Earth as seen
from their obit around the moon. Up to that point no one had seen the Earth as
it looked in space. Those, like me, who saw this revelatory photograph were
amazed at the sight—and, most of all, at the beauty and delicacy of the planet
on which we live.
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