In Which Is Considered Glise 581g

We've found one in the zone called Goldilocks,
A planet that can hold on to its air
And might have liquid water. While this rocks --
No doubt about that -- we must have a care:
This doesn't mean there's life, or that we'll talk
To beings living there soon (and indeed
Those rumors 'bout the Datuk we must knock
As groundless). I know some, with undue speed
Have jumped to such conclusions in the press.
While Glise 581g looks just right
'Twill be some time yet ere we make a guess
As to life's presence 'round that red dwarf. Might
We have some neighbors? Maybe. But I find
Another home for us is on my mind.

In Which I Peer Out At The Sky And Back On Us

We go forward and back, just looking out

Our windows or through telescopes and tools.

The Kepler probe has taught us more about

A thousand-light-year distant world we fools

Had thought we understood already; not

A bit like any planets we have here.

But thousand-year-old data's all we've got.

Around Hat-P-7b it's old news. Fear --

So slight but real -- grips me: I ask what if

The star, the planet, are still really there.

Just sixty-four years earlier, our stiff

Resolve to end a war led us to dare

Unleashing solar physics on Japan.

Will we still be here when some others scan?

Bonus Bonus Bonus Sonnet Dare: In Which I Ponder Habitable Exoplanets

In March the Kepler probe began to seek
The subtle signs of planets far in space
That circle other stars. Is Earth unique
As an abode for life like ours? This place
Which some believe's created just for us
Might not be all that special, all that rare.
But then I ponder on Copernicus,
Who laid the Ptolemaic theory bare
And proved to all the Earth goes round the sun.
It took hundreds of years before some folk
Accepted this, unbanned his book and one
Suspects that out there still, like some great joke
Are people who'll insist his work's all lies
And exoplanets naught but fireflies.