Moonshot #1

I have hatched a plot whereby we can at last get our slippery, sweaty hands on our prey. I know you don’t believe it’s possible, but it is. It truly is. It has to be, because these sunlit, cloud-dashed days of ifs and buts are growing tired of our procrastination. A dull fever is setting in, and my forehead is creasing and caving in under such remorseless heavy weather.

We can hunt down the trophy, imprison it and make it ours. That ethereal globe has taunted us for far too long, making us loathe yet love it in equal measure each time it breaks through the blackness. Always the most unforgiving of searchlights. This is the moment, then, to make it answer to our every desire, our every ridiculous and impractical whim. When it is ours, it will glimmer when we ask. When it is ours, it will illuminate the creases in the bedclothes for twenty-five hours on end, if that is what we wish. Dawn will only come when we issue our demands.

We have documented our mission down to the last dotted i and crossed t. We are buried under the scratched-out signs and crumpled papers. Every footnote corresponds with formulaic certainty to every superscripted digit. We have worked tirelessly after dark, after dark and after dark some more, until dawn inevitably bled itself slowly over the horizon - by which point we had, of course, entirely missed our target’s slow nocturnal wander across the heavens. No matter. Not this night, nor ever again. The end is in sight. Our glorious victory is almost within our grasp, just up there beyond the trees. Close enough to touch, if only we can learn to stretch and push our pathetic bodies to their limit.

We have the plans, we have the diagrams, we have the angles mathematically charted down to the last degree. The only task remaining on our checklist is to lure the silver mirrored moon - that bloated, pendulous prize - into our nets, to tempt it with caresses and then clutch it to our hearts. Soon, our fingerprints will mould new craters from the compacted dust. Soon, our eyes will stare on its shadows like silent stars.

“Catch me, oh catch me, oh catch me if you can.”