Florida Bound

A shaggy one-legged man keeps hopping
up from the wheelchair parked beneath
the scarred glass of the bus shelter.
The tough, tan skin of his arms stick out
from the shreds of a black t-shirt that once read
"Florida Bound". The stump of his severed leg
peeps obscenely from his camo shorts.
He finally settles down, flapping in front of his beard
the same daily paper I'm reading now,
with the same front page story announcing
that the rocket Juno blasted off from Cape Canaveral
early this morning, headed for Jupiter. At noon
the craft unfolded its flat black solar-panels
without a hitch. Its journey will last five years,
followed by a year of orbiting, recording and analyzing,
whispering a stream of data back to its birthplace.
It will be the first spacecraft to do more than speed past
the gas giant, and at the end of its mission it will plunge
into the planet itself, one last kamikaze dive.
I find the whole thing reassuring;
here we are, this entire country rattling and smoking
like an old beater swerving across the yellow lines
with a cracked windshield  and a tank filled with fumes
and no spare in the trunk, piloted by a leathery old man

who smells of sweat and gin, with one leg and a fierce gray mane,
while out in the silence of space, an instrument of pure reason,
eager to sacrifice itself in the name of knowledge,
elegantly spreads its wings.