POETRY: WHITNEY FRENCH

MINING THE MOON (A DÉCOUPÉ POEM)*
 
 
I.
 
a fine gray powder
meet the Moon’s surface
covering lunar regolith
sift dust
magic, playful


probes discover Helium-3:
a source of energy
trapped in Moon
equivalent value of a metric ton


a possibility:
harness it in reactors
harness it in
dust and heat
700 degrees centigrade
 
                    power
build specifically
to manage large quantities
for this main reason: dollars
no one sent in proposals
to the Moon
 
but "cleaner than fossil fuels."

II.
 
kids,
inhale the gas
of the century!
 
go be
coal miners
and recovering astronauts
 
go be
building well-funded
helium reactors
 
go go!
roving robotic miner
who walked the surface
who meet our planet’s needs
makes mining lunar program
INTERLUNE a go,
“probably the only way”
says the Director of the University of
Fusion Technology Program
 
59 million dollar lunar orbiter
      that kind of 
      commercial operation
      needs fusion technology.
 
putting tens of millions of dollars
into bags full of regolith
transport back
during solar winds,
 
research shown
supply energy of a city of ten million
for a year
 
a shift in dependence
from oil to dust
breaking even
within our limits
 
push the lunar mining concept
push the ocean through wind
push us through rare reason.

humans
make their way 
cheap.

III.
 
...inhale...
 
1,997 miners are close to breaking;
take the concept back
to Earth          because
 
“they won't go back to the moon”
                                                        “going to go back to the moon”
“piggyback on —“
                                      “…transport back
                                                   to the moon”                            “so far!”
                         “space agency barriers”    
“don't see any others
                          going back.”
 
...inhale...
 
a variant of this plan
in this playful time,
 
liquefies transport
captured
like magic 
moonlighting.
 
...inhale…
balls of gas, may not be
right, 1,997 miners
close to breaking.
                “won’t go back.”
the miner collects $145, the Program
collects $59 million
 
this kind of gas, safer?
1,997 astronauts brought back
building up, would pick up
dust
 
it's a possibility
of choice.

IV
 
we are
               breaking the Ocean
                          limits
                          barrier
                          dollars
 
 
so now; project another way
to repel the breaking,
                         the building,
                                     the shift.
 
if we sit on our hands
by the factor of 3,
we blast through Luna

can’t go back
no recovering
 
a depth of choice.

in fact, main reason
seems to be generated
in quest:

miners shift the Moon’s surface.
that’s enough to lure
us back
 
assuming
we could float
on facts, repel reactions
geologists walked
in enough crude,
found a clean source overall
 
helium-3 captured interest
stimulus, captured thousands --

 
 
                                       but the planet’s needs
                                       off the table.
 
the breaking continues
 
 
 
 
 
years go on…
​
one way
or another
we trapped
billions of humans
without a Moon
 
 
 
* “Moon Dust: The gray powder may hold a source of clean fuel.” By Dave Cravotta. Final Frontier, November/December Issue, 1996, pg 40. 

Whitney French is a storyteller and a multi-disciplinary artist. She is the editor of Black Writers Matter, a critically acclaimed anthology published by the University of Regina Press in 2019. Additionally, Whitney French is also the creator of the nomadic workshop series Writing While Black. The work featured is an excerpt of her forthcoming science-fiction verse novel. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.