Seeking a Saturn Encounter
by Connie S. Tettenborn
- Published: Thursday, July 09 2020 20:07
After millennia of keeping our feet
firmly fixed on her gritty sands,
deeply mired in her soft clay,
the earth lost her grip on mankind.
First in balloons, then airplanes,
then rockets.
Our inventiveness opened the skies,
and probes were designed to reach
out to our planetary neighbors,
which had intrigued us from a distance.
Cassini was sent to explore Saturn
up close with his flat rings and
ample orbiting moons.
Our imagination was found lacking—
We were not prepared for the
fantastical discoveries of enormous
jagged spires edging those rings like
a spiked collar
or a briny pool under the icy moon-
skin of Enceladus, cracked
by the pulling of Saturn and another moon—
both yearning for this unlikely love interest
who can yield life in her thermal vents
and spews hot steam as proof
of her active anger
at the gravitational tug of war.
We must go back to see
how this starry opera ends.
© Connie S. Tettenbornsin
Image credit:
NASA
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/science/enceladus/
Comments