I was two years old when John F. Kennedy declared “we chose to go to the moon…and do other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Space exploration was woven into the background of my childhood, and it has always captivated me. So I was paying close attention last week as the Cassini spacecraft met its fiery end in Saturn’s butterscotch clouds. Cassini and its mission to explore Saturn, its rings, and moons seemed like a worthy subject for Michelle Barnes’s September ditty challenge from Carole Boston Weatherford.
It soon became clear, though, that writing an abecedarian about Saturn and the Cassini mission would be hard! It threatened to become a list of some of Saturn’s 53 named moons. Not giving up, I expanded my focus to include the whole universe and came up with this draft.
Astral bodies:
comets,
dwarf planets with
eccentric orbits,
frozen moons,
glowing stars,
haloes of hydrogen and helium
illuminating
jet black space,
kindling wonder,
launching dreams to
mine the mysteries of
nebulous interstellar dust, the
Oort cloud,
pulsing quasars, and
rotating
spiral galaxies
tumbling through the
universe, emitting
visible and invisible
wavelengths of light and
X-rays,
yielding amazement and awe, our
zeal for discovery never-ending.
© Catherine Flynn, 2017
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team
Please be sure to head over to Amy Ludwig Vanderwater’s Poem Farm for the Poetry Friday Roundup!
Reading to the Core 
Well done, Catherine! After playing around with this form myself, I really appreciate how challenging this is and admire how your poem flows so naturally. Your ending lines are perfect (I am so envious of you finding those x,y, and z words!) and reinforce your fascination with the universe.
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Nice job! I feel the energy of your poem and like how the lines don’t feel forced.
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I listened to a TED radio talk today that mentioned the JFK quote about the moon. There is a company that encourages failure. Your poem is a wonderful abecedarian. I love these lines, “kindling wonder,
launching dreams” . I will be sharing with my students. I’m not sure if they are quite ready to tackle such a difficult form, but maybe I should just give it a shot.
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Oh, that is a divine list poem and abecedarian. I love it!
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I am amazed at your dexterity with this form, Catherine – as Jama said, it has great energy.
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Oohhh….so many mysteries of space exploration wrapped up in a delightful poem.
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Well done! Isn’t it amazing just how intimidating that form is until you stick with it and play. Then, it becomes fun and you are almost done. Ha!
I’m especially impressed with haloes of hydrogen and helium. That just sounds pretty!
Now I’m off to google Oort cloud.
Happy Poetry Friday.
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So many lovely word combinations in this, Catherine. Beautifully done. I’m surprised and delighted by the abecedarians that are emerging this month! So poetic.
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So much to love in your poem. Here are my favorite lines:
“illuminating
jet black space,
kindling wonder,
launching dreams…”
It’s perfect how you linked your own delight in space exploration into the lines of your poem.
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Well done, Catherine. A great mix of research, science and poetry with catchy lines like
rotating
spiral galaxies
tumbling through the
universe,
and you got a great z word at the end.
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*Applause*! I so appreciate your putting a poetic spin on all these space-thoughts I’ve been having this summer, what with the eclipse, the PBS Voyager special, and Cassini!:0) (And I agree about “zeal” – terrific word!)
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Super, Catherine! I posted NASA photos for Wellness Wednesday last week because they were kindling my wonder and launching my dreams! 🙂
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I love this, Catherine! Despite the constraints of the abecedarian, you’ve captured the vastness and wonder of the universe without drawing attention to the form. My astronomer husband also gives this a big thumbs up. 🙂
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Holy wowza! You really did this. You had to know space stuff to do it too. Fabulous! I heard the npr story about Cassini “meeting its fiery end.” Talk about bittersweet. Peace. x
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