Liber Iovis - Chapter 3

Verses

At first I called it a ball of gas, because accuracy is a useful broom against worship.

Then the images arrived: storms swallowing continents, pale bands racing past one another, an eye wide enough to misplace Earth in.

I corrected myself. A ball of gas may still be terrifying.

Jupiter has no floor for the imagination to stand upon. Descend long enough and the word weather stops meaning what it meant.

We once joked that the giant guarded us. Later we learned gravity is not kindness; it throws stones away and sometimes throws them inward.

A protector who cannot choose what he protects is only a force with good publicity.

Still, ninety-five moons circle the giant like arguments around a professor who has forgotten the lecture.

I do not think the planet is a god. This has never prevented gods from borrowing its measurements.

The Red Spot has survived generations of astronomers. Our theories change faster than its weather.

If there is a sermon in gravity, it is this: influence need not touch what it alters.

If there is a warning in mass, it is this: becoming larger changes the paths of smaller things.

We sent instruments because awe without measurement becomes superstition, and measurement without awe becomes inventory.

A cat in the observatory slept through the flyby data. I envied the animal's confidence in the universe.

The giant turned once in less than half an Earth day, as if enormity had somewhere urgent to be.

I wrote no prayer in the mission log. I wrote: Beautiful. That was already dangerously close.