
3 haikus will launch on Mars MAVEN in 2013. (An artist’s conception of the MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
Sometimes a poem gets to go
in your place
and say the first word
in another world.
Out of your hands
and into the vacuum
a poem gets to go
instead of you
and in your absence
it repeats and repeats
the same phrases
and grows fierce
and wild-eyed
convinced
that these few words
you gave it
say everything
that can be said
and you
if you were there
could point out
the landscape
constantly
rewritten
if only you got to go.