Welcome Mat/No Welcome Mat, A Pair of Space Haikus, Fiction

Welcome Mat

Domes. Ships. Lava tubes.
Space beckons humanity.
Follow the poem.

No Welcome Mat

Unbreathable air,
With inhospitable soil,
Blown by solar wind.

~~~

Afterword

Inspiration, The First

“Join the mission and have your name engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft as it travels 1.8 billion miles to explore Europa, an ocean world that may support life.” NASA: Message In A Bottle

“NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign invites people around the world to sign their names to a poem written by the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.” MiaB: Learn

Sure, it’s a PR stunt. Why not? It’s free. Well, free-ish. Our tax dollars at work.

One of their suggested ways to participate was to write your own poem. Et voilà. I am also gathering the parts to build an unbranded *cough*LEGO*cough* model of the spaceship. NASA: Build a Europa Clipper Toy Bricks Model

Wanna join? “The campaign closes at 11:59 p.m. EST, Dec. 31, 2023.” NASA: Time Is Running Out to Add Your Name to NASA’s Europa Clipper, Six (five) weeks remain for you to add your name to a microchip that will ride aboard the spacecraft as it explores Jupiter’s moon Europa. November 13, 2023.

Inspiration, The Second

A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? by Kelly Weinersmith & Zach Weinersmith (Penquin 2023).

Admission, The First

I have not finished this. I do not expect their thesis to change in the second half of the book. As I understand it, their goal is to bring up the difficult bits that space cheerleaders gloss over.

“But reading about space settlement today is kind of like reading about what quantity of beer is safe to drink in a world where all the relevant books are written by breweries. Even when they’re trying to be evenhanded, they leave things out. One of the most prominent books on space settlement, The Case for Mars, is over 400 pages long … but never once mentions the existence of international space law.” A City on Mars, pp4-5.

My two most frequent thoughts are, ‘That’s a good point’ and ‘There goes THAT science fiction idea.’ Excellent pop science along the lines of, ‘We did the research so you don’t have to.’

This book goes on my list of Required Reading for Living in the Modern World. Other books on that list include How to Lie with Statistics by Huff (Norton 1954, don’t let the date fool you, math is still math), On The Grid by Huler (Penguin 2010), and The Urban Birder by Lindo (Imm 2012).[Looking Up At The Landfill], [Missing Social Media]

Admission, The Second

A purist would say these are not really haiku. A true haiku would have a caesura, a juxtaposing break between images. These are more a clever list of 17 syllables. Whatever ya wanna call the form, they were fun to come up with.

Administrative Note, The First

Written with How Many Syllables.

Administrative Note, The Second

Thank you to Grace. I learned about the Europa Clipper from her. Previous appearance [Riding The Camino de Santiago, Guest Post]

Onwards!
Katherine