The Heartbeat of the Theatre at the Plinius Crater

The family has driven from South Dakota
to the lunar bases on the Plinius crater
seeking a warm coat like a sponge
without an ocean for cover or still lining.

There is a theatre on Plinius just over
the family doctor’s foothills that boasts
a yearly showing of August Wilson’s
Pittsburgh Cycle, sometimes it rains.

Dad has never seen an August Wilson
play in the theatre as he prefers to read
plays from paperback doorstop copies,
lasting until the end of the century, still.

It is worth a trip to the moon, I tell
him, knowing, he needed to see his
doctor anyways, and this was the
perfect excuse to get his check-up.

Now I will just have to take the doctor
aside and get him to covertly check dad
for dementia or Alzheimer’s, because my
father has refused to get tested himself.

The theatre of family politics is almost
as daunting as the difference between
reading a play and being in the theatre
yourself, immersed in the same heartbeat.