Today's Poetry Friday segment is about a father, a child...and the moon. Jim Skinner is a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's astrogeology lab in Flagstaff. And his 9-year-old son, Leif, thinks that's pretty cool. They chart moon maps together and stargaze from their back deck. Today, they recite lunar poetry to close-out KNAU's weeklong series celebrating 50 years since astronauts first walked on the moon.
JS: My name is Jim Skinner. I am a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center here in Flagstaff, Arizona.
LS: Hi, I’m Leif Skinner, and Jim Skinner is my dad. He’s a cool dad.
JS: So, my job with the U.S.G.S. is that I’m in charge of the production of planetary geologic maps on behalf of NASA. The U.S.G.S. is the only institution in the world that makes standardized geologic maps, and I am in charge of that.
LS: His job’s really cool because he can make maps of anything and he can make posters and stuff. Once you go into the building, there’s, like, models, and I like to look at those sometimes, of, like, the moon landers and the rockets and stuff, and it’s really cool, and I like my dad’s job.
JS: Sometimes when Leif comes into the office we have old photo mosaics which are just the prints of all the images for the moon, or Mars, and they’re all stitched together, and we have a whole bunch of excess ones. So, sometimes when he’s in the office I’ll take one of those and he can draw on it. He’s basically trying to make a basic geologic map using geologic mapping principles. I’ve taught him that and we’ve talked about those kinds of things. He will take those and start to trace out different kinds of geologic units on the moon and mars. And, he’s pretty good at it.
LS: I like tracing out the craters and, like, where all the little rocks of the craters went all over the place.
JS: Ok, I’m going to read a poem about the moon, and the title is Moonlight, and it’s by Vita Sackville-West:
What time the meanest brick and stone
Take on a beauty not their own,
And past the flaw of builded wood
Shines the intention whole and good,
And all the little homes of man
Rise to a dimmer, nobler span;
When colour's absence gives escape
To the deeper spirit of the shape,
-- Then earth's great architecture swells
Among her mountains and her fells
Under the moon to amplitude
Massive and primitive and rude:
-- Then do the clouds like silver flags
Stream out above the tattered crags,
And black and silver all the coast
Marshalls its hunched and rocky host,
And headlands striding sombrely
Buttress the land against the sea,
-- The darkened land, the brightening wave --
And moonlight slants through Merlin's cave.
LS: Today I'm going to read a poem about the moon. It's called Moon Catching Net, by Shel Silverstein:
I've made me a moon-catchin' net,
And I'm goin' huntin' tonight,
I'll run along swingin' it over my head,
And grab for that big ball of light.
So tomorrow just look at the sky,
And if there's no moon you can bet
I've found what I sought and I finally caught
The moon in my moon-catchin' net.
But if the moon's still shinin' there,
Look close underneath and you'll get
A clear look at me in the sky swingin' free
With a star in my moon-catchin' net.
