July 5, 2016

approaching Jupiter

I picture them, the mad scientists, squinting at their screens and holding
their collective breath as the engines fired 500 million miles away and
a seemingly untouchable planet came into view. It turns out they were not so mad
after all - maybe that's why when, after they stood to cheer, they turned to each other
and embraced. We did it! the gesture seemed to say, and behind it, a smaller voice:
This is just the beginning and then, smaller still, We were not wrong to dream.
I am sitting here, in my living room, an atlas on a table nearby. It doesn't matter whether it's real
or not; the landscape of that story we never stopped believing in is always this close, even if
we never get up to rustle the pages open. We can't stop the rattle of wind at the door, or
the wild song of gravity, or that certainty of hope that fills the sky every time we look up.