________after Cassini

I am comforted to know
that no one really really knows
whether Saturn’s core is solid gas
liquid plasma or something
else altogether. Dear computer
I always figured we were guessing.
I figured there were two ways
to know: to eliminate the possible
and to imagine it. What certainty
develops when you try to describe
what you cannot see
in the spectrometer readouts.
This blank it might be methane.
This gap might be a moon in the rings.
That ring of space between rings of substance is a finger wake
in the surface of lake water.
Dear computer. Tell me what you see
or what you sense. Or what sense
you develop
of Saturn in that farlight. In the dim
sunslant across the equator of a planet we know
would float
in a bathtub if a bathtub
Dear computer
do you love it. Are you silent
is the planet must you
press your ear to the surface to feel
frequencies thrum near-space songs when you touch the planet must the planet
press its oblong cheek to yours to hear what I imagine
a whirring
full of purpose full of watching full of beep boop Dear computer. Can you touch
the air around you. Dear computer
can you scoop it like a melon ball
can you scoop it like milk
can you feel the singing or do you hear the singing
as you dive at first then sink. Dear computer. What question
turns our clockwork drives the deepcode

 

Emma Catherine Perry