Why do some planets get so many moons?
the juvenile Earth sighed to his mother.
And why is mine so far away?
With craters and a dark side?
Well, said his mother, who saw her son
lamenting pithy worries. He did not deserve to spiral.
He is an orbiter who orbits. His perception
skewed by the scale on which light accelerates.
You were once moonlets upon
moonlets that could not weather
your thermosphere nor stratosphere
running tides, blasting bite
size things to the ether.
They left you giblets of
dinosaur in your mantle.You
crusted with no tether.
You are free-range, re-cycled
wind-dusted storms which
end in sprouting heathers.
Son, you are your own most
precious resource, admire
your moon from afar.
Those other planets are first
second and fourth in line to drop
into the Sun. Their moons pull
no tides. They are counting on
crashing into the planet they call home.