At the science museum they have a simulator.
This one puts you on the surface of the Moon.
It’s fun and unique for an adult. For a 3 year old,
it’s a little terrifying. With every bump and shake
of the machine, he holds my shoulders a little tighter.
I tell him we are almost done and he says “almost, almost,
almost” in little shrieks of helpless pleas. But he
loves it all the same. He is amazed. He keeps looking
at the graphics on the screen. He looks as if he is really
landing on the Moon. Astonished and scared. Isn’t there
a bit of that in all of us? When the ride is over he is smiling.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more.