One and another

There was just something about it,
the Lunar Module, true spacecraft.
Made to fly in vacuum only,
a safe harbor, metallic life raft,
never feeling the air across her hull.
A truly unique creation,
Grumman-built, NASA planned,
exceptional transportation.
Drawn and built, paper & glue,
a thing of unearthly lines;
Every angle I knew by heart,
inside the cockpit from controls to signs.
So it was a silly but understandable thing
when a decade later at Scout camp,
my first canoe, aluminum-hulled
bore the unmistakable Grumman stamp,
and it pleased me beyond reason
to paddle across the lake, day or night
in a cousin of the Lunar Module,
gliding in my own unearthly flight.

Another decade further on
it was my transport with another.
Crossing every dawn, returning in the dark,
newly married, not quartered with the others.
We two, still strangers though knowing much
of each, working as staffers, together living,
our first summer together mostly apart:
except for those paddles each evening.
On cloudless nights, we'd pause halfway;
five hundred yards to either shore,
a hundred feet to unfelt lakebed below,
above the stars, the moon, and more.
We'd watch the Milky Way echo our path
and the stars too numerous for number,
infinity doubled in the still surface surrounding,
a moment more restful than all our slumber.
A Grumman vessel carried us, with caution
and good judgment taking us to the other side.
Unearthly, but heavenly, the journey ends
until our spacecraft takes us on another ride.