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| Painting by Alan Bean, the fourth astronaut (Apollo 12) to have walked on the moon. He died on May 26, 2018. |
“I think of myself not as an astronaut who paints, but as an artist who was once an astronaut” —Alan Bean, Apollo
His name connoting photosynthesis
in pods on earth, he traveled to the moon
and stood in fields of cobalt dust and darkness.
No one saw it in his way—the dune
of oxidates, the earthrise glinting fire
on the helmet of his mate. The silent night.
He gathered specimens of stone and scraps
of wreckage from an unmanned satellite.
He worked for seven hours, drawing maps
in his imagination to a higher
landscape in a timeless super 8
depicting the recurrent astral mystery.
The dream. While others met a common fate
in business, he resolved on painting history,
unpacking samples to a canvas of desire.