The following poem was first published August 8, 2024 in Poets for Science. It’s about planets c and d, orbiting around the star Kepler-138. I have long been fascinated by exoplanets, that is, planets outside our Solar System. Because these planets are so far away, we know very little about them. Thus, I turn to the medium of poetry to imagine what these planets might be like.

Planets c and d are currently estimated to be worlds entirely covered with water.

A thousand miles of ocean deep

surround those iron cores

Tumultuous waves tossed back and forth,

an ever-present roar

Water is weird at depths profound,

the pressure so intense

Water shifts from gas to liquid

to something far more dense

Around the dwarf, not one but two

such planets orbit tight

Blue twins like eyes of Earth-like size

peer back into the night

Volcanoes erupt and travel up,

the ocean daily boils

Across such seas no ship could sail,

the surface rolls and roils

This pair of wombs, with countless moons:

what creatures have you birthed?

We’ll never know unless we hold

a ship in waters berthed