Michael Collins kept the bus idling
while the two other astronauts got
to walk on the moon,

and though Collins said he didn’t mind,
as much as the world focused on
Armstrong and Aldrin stamping

the moon forever with their
Earthling footprints, I, about to
turn 11 in ten days, couldn’t stop

thinking about the man who wasn’t
on the surface, but who, piloting
the command module, drifted

behind the dark side of the moon
for 48 minutes of each orbit, waiting
for his colleagues to return,

unafraid, feeling “almost exultation.”
Collins carried them all, Aldrin later said,
“deftly to new heights and to the future.”

Now, 55 years later, driving home
with the full moon over my shoulder,
I remember them all, whisper their names,

bless the bootprints of every human
who walked there and the ones who drove
the buses, returning them, as all good

bus drivers do, safely back to the only
home any of us will ever know,
this precious blue marble.