From Cassini to Saturn

Thirteen years in orbit is a long time

to get acquainted with tumult,

frozen gaseous turning

pulling me along.

                It’s like physics

to bring things to an end—

I’ve done all I can for you.

Your impermanent rings, I suppose,

give us something in common,

a whole’s capacity to break

apart. Yours pulls debris,

the junk around burning through

collision the same way,

at some level, we all do

—the same way I’m doing now,

plunging. For such a cold place, love,

you’re warmer than the travel.

You take what comes, you welcome

shared forms: the end of me continues into us.

                It makes me wonder,

when I turn around to Earth, how many subcommittees

have to break it apart piece by piece?

How many draft proposals and diagrams fly around

doomed garbage before someone else can see us both

for what we are? What figure

does it take to show how

the crash completes? That it’s a good thing

to be made

to break on you?