{"id":7240,"date":"2024-04-20T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-20T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/dorianne-lauxs-stunning-poem-about-bearing-our-human-losses-when-even-the-moon-is-leaving-us-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2024-04-20T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-20T18:30:00","slug":"dorianne-lauxs-stunning-poem-about-bearing-our-human-losses-when-even-the-moon-is-leaving-us-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/dorianne-lauxs-stunning-poem-about-bearing-our-human-losses-when-even-the-moon-is-leaving-us-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Dorianne Laux\u2019s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the Moon Is Leaving Us \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\"Facts<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHearing the rising tide,\u201d Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life<\/a>, \u201cthere are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before\u2026 of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean current, from past to unknown future.\u201d There is indeed in the physics of the tides \u2014 that gravitational dialogue between our planet and its only satellite \u2014 something of the existential, something reminding us how transient all things are, how fluid the future, how slippery our grasp of anything we hold on to, how relational every loss. <\/p>\n

The tides bridge the earthly and the cosmic, science and symbol: They cause drag that slows down our planet\u2019s spin rate; because gravity binds the two, as the Earth loses angular momentum, the Moon overcompensates in response; as it speeds up, it begins slipping out of our gravitational grip, slowly moving away from us. The prolific English astronomer Edmund Halley first began suspecting this haunting fact in the early 18th century after analyzing ancient eclipse records. It took another quarter millennium and a giant leap into the cosmos for his theory to be tested against reality in a living poem of geometry and light: When Apollo<\/em> astronauts placed mirrors on the surface of the Moon and laser beams were aimed at them from Earth, it was revealed that the Moon is indeed drifting away from us, at the precise rate of 3.8 centimeters per year. The Moon, born of the body of the Earth billions of years ago, is drifting away at more than half the rate at which a child grows. <\/p>\n

If even the Moon is leaving us \u2014 \u201cthat best fact, the Moon,\u201d<\/a> in Margaret Fuller\u2019s exultant words \u2014 what is there to hold on to? How are we to bear our ordinary human losses, the worst facts of our lives?<\/p>\n

Those questions, immense and intimate, come alive in the stunning title poem of Dorianne Laux\u2019s\u2019 collection Facts About the Moon<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), stunningly performed by Debbie Millman<\/a> at the seventh annual Universe in Verse<\/em><\/a> on the eve of the 2024 total solar eclipse. <\/p>\n