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      September 19, 2017Elegy for a SpacecraftRaye Hendrix

      Cassini           you cosmic firefly
      you vacuum-empty           space bowl
       
      manufactured metal comet
      Saturn’s brief           demystifying moon:
       
      I suppose even robots
      have a time to die           but if
       
      you’ve got to go           (and you do
      I’m sorry, you do)           at least
       
      you’re going beautifully:
      jet-propulsion           burnout
       
      gravity slung arc into           oblivion
      probably           (I’m sorry) we won’t
       
      come to collect           your body
      probably there won’t be           a body
       
      left to collect           you
      returned to stardust           vaporized
       
      before the atmosphere gives out           but
      that’s alright           isn’t it?
       
      after all           we’ve catalogued
      your memories:           geyser moons
       
      hula-hooping sixth planet
      from the sun           and somewhere
       
      even us on the black non-horizon
      of void:           a speck of light
       
      a blue-pinprick yesterday
      calling your name

      from Poets Respond

      Raye Hendrix

      “I never thought I could feel sad for a robot (I honestly dislike them as a general rule—especially if they have faces), and then I read about the impending destruction of the Cassini spacecraft early Friday morning. There was something so human in the article I read: the author called it a ‘suicide,’ and it got me thinking about the nature of people, and what it really means to be human. Here’s this spacecraft, barely younger than I am, and it’s seen things I never will—except I will, because it shared them with me. Even as it plummets to its death in Saturn’s atmosphere, it’s beaming back images, ‘clearing its memory,’ as the article put it. And isn’t that so beautiful? Isn’t that so human? Don’t we all try to pass on stories, memories, to the people who will be left behind when we’re gone? For the first time in my memory, my heart broke for a robot. A poem seemed a good way to say thank you.”

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