Do you remember when they landed on the moon?

I do.

A schoolgirl, I was obsessed with it.

The jerky images on the TV,

the bounding jump, the giant leap.

And I remember going into school next morning,

but something else had happened in the night.

The father of a girl in class had died

and all her friends were gathered round,

and all that I could think to say was

“But he’ll never know they landed on the moon!”

And just because he’d died a day too soon!

He’d taken his own giant leap,

his small step for mankind.

At the time, to me, it seemed a shame.

But no one else had thought of it that way.

And now I see that my first thought was wrong

and the step he’d taken was the greater one.