Io, Passing

Image: Cassini Imaging Team, NASA

Io, Passing
by Gideon Burton

Observe her passing Jupiter again,
a ball of spouting lava, spitting fire,
and yet a silent pebble on a wire
before the giant's curling, swirling blend
of yellow hydrogens and gassy bands
of cloudy helium in ragged spires,
with marbled methane thickening entire
sea-skies dense with hurricanes, with strands
of cosmic elements preparing time
for marking once the smearing ruddy rage
has settled into orbits, cycles, coils
of wanderers upon their lonely climb
toward the meaning of an eon's age.
For this, the minion moon attends and boils.