“He loves the buoyant, frictionless / plate / his father has in focus.”
–Stefanie Marlis, “Saturn”
Cassini’s first color composite of Saturn, the moon Titan visible at upper-left, imaged from 177 million miles away in October of 2002, Credit: NASA/JPL/Southwest Research Institute
As we get ready to say goodbye to the Cassini spacecraft, I hope you’ll take this chance to read an example of Saturn embedded in our culture, as well as our individual psyches. Stefanie Marlis’s poem, quoted above, is a wonderful and pointed glimpse into the matriarchal mind, in relation to an imperfect but precious and promising child. Saturn makes a crucial appearance at the end. Short poem. Quite accessible. Give it a try:
The Cassini spacecraft ends its two-decade mission on the morning of September 15th. It will have been one of the great flagship missions of space exploration. For more information, visit NASA’s Grand Finale Toolkit.
Jake Christensen, aka ChildeJake, is a Michigan-based writer with a strong interest in space exploration and NASA in particular. He has attended NASA Socials at Glenn Research Center and Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as trips to venues like the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. He is a member of The Planetary Society and an avid reader and creative writer.
During the daytime, Jake provides marketing and administrative support for scientific equipment sales. His writing has appeared in The Planetary Report, Current Magazine in Ann Arbor, as well as online for pillownaut.blogspot.com, encoremichigan.com, and his other blog: Childe Jake’s Pilgrimage. He has also performed many times onstage in regional and educational theatre. Periodically, he appears in The Moth StorySLAMs.
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