050920

A look at Jovian astronomy as a scifaiku:

Europa’s

been slapped around a bit

she can’t leave her Da



Or does it work better as a lune?

Europa’s been slapped

too often

Jupiter’s handprints



Maybe a fib:

 

look

at

her face

Jupiter’s

worked her over good

but still Europa doesn’t leave

042320b

sun room
on Mercury
no windows

121818c

circling their master
satellites
made of stone and gas

083018d

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ultima-in-view-nasa-s-new-horizons-makes-first-detection-of-kuiper-belt-flyby-target

rumors of a sun
warm Ultima Thule
New Horizons comes

051618

it takes the outer worldlets
centuries to millennia
to dance around the sun  just once
colonists live and die
and nothing seems to change
least of all the cold
and dark
small wonder many return
though the journey takes half a lifetime
to what's left of
cinder earth

041118b

red-giant sunburn
when Sol kisses Earth
we put on SPF 500,000

040618c

Colonize Mars

It doesn't matter that we will
contaminate the place
with our DNA-based life
if anything lives there
if anything ever lived there
that might be based
on some other biochemistry
it's nothing but single cells
not as important
as our escape from Earth

If we find native organic material there
that's lagniappe
besides
the rovers have already done the dirty deed
we find life underground
it'll be something we brought ourselves

poem from a previous millennium

Neptune's Journey

It was a cold November,

Neptune was rising, dwarfing the pock-marked Moon.

The ships rode high in the water, vaster than Leviathan of legend,

shining eggs strung with millions of lights.

Grounded in the seabed forever it had seemed,

but I knew these birds would fly.

It's a long way here from Neptune's cold familiar orbit

A journey most planets don't make once.