The Far Side Is a Wall

They want to put a suitcase around the Moon.

Forty minutes of each two-hour orbit the body stands in the way. Earth-noise cannot get through.

That is a wall, not a door. A door lets something in. A wall stops something so something else can be heard.

They will listen for twenty-one centimetres. That name is the paper's mouth. The stretch of light sat still in hydrogen long before anyone called it.

I will not say whispers. I will not say dark ages. Those are dresses.

The suitcase is not launched. Five years, if the hope holds. A thousand hours, if the two years hold.

Waiting forty minutes is not yet listening. Then they listen for something that has no mouth and has been going the whole time we were talking.