Conversations
at Craters of the Moon
by Jon Doughboy
​​​​
Drum circles and campgrounds, hungry flies to fresh shit, Idaho in August and on this black, scabrous, lunar-like sea snippets of conversation flatulate through tents, waft past crackling kindling and between and beneath the chords of an out of tune acoustic guitar.
​
"Dad, do you think we ever really landed on the moon? I read online that the Chinese will be the first to really do it.”
​
Drums are drumming. Mare Tranquillitatis, Lacus Doloris, Palus Somni—distant places on earth’s satellite bearing names in a dead language. Planets continue their orbits, awash in the ceaseless, invisible solar wind.
​
"Of course I want to go to Glacier but it’s out of the way. We agreed we don’t have the time to drive so far north. No, you’re the one who’s being a see you next Tuesday about it.”
Drum, drum. The guitarist singing, You saw the crescent.
​
"What are you doing? Your fingering game is incredible. Did you read a book or something?”
"This is a trip for us, for our family, for the future of our family, and we don’t have the luxury of driving practically up to Canada on a whim. We have an itinerary. Will you let me make a decision for once?”
​
Drum, drum, wrists and palms and fingers slapping djembes. Rhythmic resonances slide along cracks and fissures in the earth. Bright above, the moon stretched taut.
​
A grief-stricken young man, newly fatherless, lying on his stomach in a bivy sac and reading aloud softly, by the dimmest setting of his headlamp light, a death poem by Hyakuri:
​
When I die what I shall see will be the lustrous moon.
​
"Do you have another go in you? Drink some water. I want to see what else you learned in that book..”
​
I saw the whole of the moon.
​
"Dad, if you were alive, you would have loved it here. I wish you could have made it out West. Wish we could have, together.”
​
A death poem by Kyo’on:
​
A last fart: are these the leaves of my dream, vainly falling?
​
The whole of the moon.
"Ooh, looks like you do have another go in you. Good boy.”
​
Drumming, more drumming, louder, dissonant beats, hooves pounding lava fields, iron meeting basalt, planets colliding and trapping the debris in their orbit.
"Don’t believe everything you read online, bud. Just appreciate this sky. I think that’s the Sea of Tranquility but I forgot my binoculars.”
A pause in the drumming. Inside the quiet, moans. The faintest sound of a tongue worming into an ear.
"I don’t think I have another trip like this in me. Don’t think we have another trip in us, period.”
​
A death poem by Shidoken:
​
Returning as it came, a naked summer worm.
​
Something, something, turnstiles, la la wind at your heels.
​
"You don’t see a moon like this in the city, bud. Take it in while the taking’s good.”
The drumming ceases for a second. Moisture whistles out of green wood consumed by fire. Tents pull on their stakes with each breath of wind. Rock and soil exhale the heat of the day. Charged particles pummel the surface of the moon, a dark gray regolith that only seems bright to those viewing it from earth.
Laughs and whispers. A whimper. A fart.
The guitarist’s fingers stumble momentarily along the strings before he continues with the next tune.
​​
​​
​
