A Poem: Why Parents Fear Space Travel

The limits are endless.
We can send them there
but cannot bring them back.

Because of some miscalculation,
we could cause a soft landing
to badly slam the surface

or go pell-mell into that hell
of a place without anchoring,
where the nothing of is is.

Nothing we have seen or wanted—
no journeys, traumas, itineraries—
prepares us for this trajectory.

This article appears in February 2013.