I was three, four--surely no more
we marched through the old city, I
mostly on father's shoulders, a place
I was perched so often back then  

of a thousand dry seas on the moon's
pocked face, only one my father chose to wed  
with a bomb crater: Mare Ingenii

to others, you were but a mammoth hole,
ill-timed casualty of the bombers wrath,
but Dad named you for a barren basin
on the dark side of the moon  

eons later, I was an ancient ten,
and John Glenn spun thrice around the globe
I then asked if we would live to see the real you,  
an astronomically sculpted scoop, two hundred
arctic black miles across  

dad said of course,
and I believed him, especially
after I asked when, and he said
a billion years ago