On Titan

In my dreams
I race paper boats
on Titan.

Huygens’ descent: final moments before landing

10 km up

Planetary Worlds

Let’s go for a creek walk

Image of Titan’s surface taken by the Huygens probe on January 14, 2005. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Let’s go for a creek walk
you and I
and skip rocks across
the methane

and maybe we could picnic
in a spot with a view
of the etherized sun

that might as well be
sunset on a foggy beach
back home.

Let’s go for a creek walk
you and I
and turn over some rocks
that are not
gneiss, schist, or quartz.

but leave the bucket behind.
I’m not expecting to find crawfish
this time.

I’ve walked a lot of creeks
in my life

some with fast water
some with slow
some with no

and trust me

we need to check this one out.

thank you Cassini

Haiku I wrote for my 5,000th tweet honoring the Cassini mission to Saturn. The haiku uses text from Christaan Huygens’ “Celestial Worlds” (1698). The wavy background made from picture of kimono fabric.

The Celestial Worlds Discovered: Redacted Poem

Christiaan Huygens’ “The Celestial Worlds Discovered” redacted into a poem. (I used the 2nd edition, published 1722.)