Closing on Titan

This is a little poem that I wrote in 1980 about Voyager I, which was launched from Cape Canaveral on September 5, 1977. As I wrote it was closing on Saturn’s largest moon. Then, it left the solar system, and according to an Associated Press article by Robert Locke would take “an endless cruise among the stars.” Those words, so poignant and iambic at the same time inspired me to write these words:

An endless cruise among the stars
The little spaceship undertook.
She lifted off the Cape one day
And left without a backward look.

An endless cruise among the stars—
Until in distant space and time,
The craft may come to kindred souls
Who ask, “Whose is this ship sublime?”

An endless cruise among the stars
From distant Earth that’s quite a climb,
The lonely little robot sent
By people, human beings sublime.