Wipe the sleepies from your eyes

after a 9.5-hour sleep period

after leaving lunar orbit.

Wake up, wake up.

It’s July 22, 1969, and we’re on our way home

It’s July 22nd and it’s quit aboard Columbia.

We tell the ground, “It’s nice to sit here

and watch the Earth getting larger

and the moon smaller and smaller.”

*

Thirty-nine minutes after we wake,

already 36,800 miles from the moon,

we pass into the Earth’s sphere of gravity

and begin accelerating.

And joke that we felt the spacecraft jump

as we passed the line.

*

Our only major task, a MCC

 — Midcourse Correction —

less than three hours after we wake,

an 10.5-second burn of our RCC jets.

Our residuals look good.

*

In prime TV time, we make a 20-minute broadcast,

our relaxed state obvious as we float about

the Lower Equipment Bay at the foot of the couches.

We open with a shot of the distant moon

which Capcom Charlie Duke mistakes for the Earth.

We joke, “I believe that’s where we just came from”

and to prove it zoom out from so it shrinks in size

“to make sure it really is the one we’re leaving.”

*

Yes, we are relaxed, showing the two rock boxes

stored in cubby holes down in the LEB.

“These boxes include the samples of the various types of rocks,

the ground mass of soil . . . and the core tubes that took depth samples . . .”

We demonstrate what we eat, ham it up making a ham sandwich.

Show the water gun, water jiggling off a spoon.

We end outside again,

this time with a shot of the Earth, 175,000 miles away.

“No matter where you travel, it’s always nice to get home.”