“What I hope for,” Limón said, “is a sort of soothing. I don’t mean just for humans, but for animals, plants and every living creature.”
— Elisabeth Egan, from “A Poem Hitches a Ride on a Rocket, to Infinity and Beyond.” NASA and the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón may not be obvious collaborators, but a Jupiter-bound mission helped them find common ground. (NY Times, October 25, 2024)
Notes:
- Photograph: Europa Clipper Lifts Off From Kennedy Space Center. NASA/Kim Shiflett
- Listen to Ada Limón read her poem here.
- In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa by Ada Limón:
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.