My favourite part of watching the rover
named Perseverance touch down
on Mars two hundred and three days
after it took off in a rocket
was not that the moment was narrated
by a scientist named Swati Mohan
who wore the same bindi
she has always worn
or that it made so many hearts
stop and then soar
at the same time
or even the monumental effort
it took to beat the odds.
All of those made me cry
but what I loved most
was the jar of peanuts
they keep on hand
at NASA’s mission control facilities
amidst all the years of measuring
and engineering accuracy
and talk of radioisotope thermoelectricity
there remains a fierce reverence
for this banal bucket of plain nuts
and its incalculable promise
of luck.