Letter to a friend living on the moon

When I imagine you it is always
mid-step,
those boots only a rapper could love
poised over dusty regolith,
your whole self suspended,
waiting patiently to fall.

I hear you have a greenhouse there.
Do you grow tomatoes? Do they claw up
the way they do here, with fibrous stems
gripping frames with tiny runners,
their fruit heavy, bulbous, demanding?
I can only picture soft things growing--
seaweed, Spanish moss--
and bromeliads in the crevices of landing gear.

I should not take such liberties
with the thought of you as:
to see you in the morning, tying your hammock
to the wall,
yawning at the earth beyond a tiny porthole,
making faces at instant coffee.

And the truth is that I don't--
don't imagine you, I mean--
except in moments like this, when,
the water in a round bowl in the sink
reflecting the white of an overhead fluorescent,
it occurs to me that our orbit
has never been so well-defined.