Cousin Bob, as a boy on Long Island,
Loved The Grateful Dead and Star Trek.
He bought music tapes, went to rock concerts,
And hung tennis and whiffle balls
From his bedroom ceiling,
Imagining them planets, like Jupiter,
With wads of tape for their moons,
Including Europa,
Which in 1610 Galileo 
Became the first Earthling to see,
His homemade spyglass making science history.
Often, Cousin Bob would fall asleep wondering,
Does life exist on Europa?

When Cousin Bob grew up, he became 
A planetary scientist
At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab,
Where he and his colleagues pushed
For seventeen years,
To fund a mission to Europa.
Downloads from the Voyager 2 flyby
In 1997 and the Galileo spacecraft
From 1996-2002
Made him even more intrigued
About Europa’s mysteries, including
Its strange geology, odd magnetic signature,
And salty ocean beneath a thin shell of ice,
Which Cousin Bob thinks likely harbors
Life humans can recognize.

Today, with a robotic mission to Europa
Approved to launch in 2022,
Reach the icy moon in three to seven years,
And send data back to Earth for careful analysis, 
Seventeen years of labor and dreams
Are coming to fruition,
With nine science experiments
On one long-awaited mission.

Forever a Deadhead and Trekkie, 
Now also part of the global
Europa consortium, 
Cousin Bob muses with hard-won wisdom,
"Somewhere in the world tonight,  
Kids looking up at planets and moons
Hanging from bedroom ceilings 
Will one day be telling me 
If Europa turns out to be
All I dreamt it would be.”

Cosmic Comedienne
Tucson, Arizona
May 28, 2016