“Trajectory” by Katie Kemple (original) (raw)

TRAJECTORY

NASA crashes spacecraft into asteroid, passing planetary defense test —The Washington Post

How many years does it take to orchestrate

a crash landing? I pretend it’s fifteen,

that engineers conceived of DART

in a room, outrageously courageous.

Their target: Dimorphos, a moon orbiting

an asteroid. While around the same time,

I brought a child onto the earth whose

chosen name rhymes with arrow,

which is a sort of dart. And I see that

the little spacecraft left California last

November, only the size of a refrigerator.

I picture ours, sleek and silver, blast off

from the kitchen through the roof,

traveling ten long months to the high school

whose football field is approximately

the size of the asteroid’s moon.

There’s no coming back from this.

Just as in June, my child lifted off

from the middle school, and now—

touch down! Explodes into the rocky

maze of ninth grade classrooms.

An Italian camera the size of a toaster

followed the ship to record the collision.

The paparazzi takes photos and photos,

like me, to capture the juncture prodigiously,

sending images back to a cheering crowd

of scientists who by now, are family.

They say it takes a village to raise a kid.

But what is their trajectory? To be a parent

is to see your child nudge humanity,

a body that leaves your kitchen and makes

an impact that ripples out for all eternity.

—from Poets Respond
October 2, 2022

__________

Katie Kemple: “This poem responds to NASA’s DART mission which crash landed an aircraft into Dimorphos, the moon of an asteroid, in an attempt to put the pair on a new trajectory through space. Many news stories attempted to describe the size of the aircraft and asteroid to familiar objects here on earth, and that sparked the image of other experiences—how all human endeavors have a ripple effect. That this ‘nudge’ DART gave Dimorphos happens every day, and that sometimes a crash can yield a net positive result. My family enjoys seeing the cheering scientists after a successful mission. We fill this dark universe with cheers and love.”