Astronomy for Big Tent 14

Big Tent wants us to turn our poetry on its head this week –
write something out of character, turn our ideas upside down and
inside out. We’re asked to look at our recent output to discover
common elements of style, layout, protagonist or content.
Hmmm! I thought. My poems take many forms, styles and themes.
But one thing is common: they tend to arrive in my head on their own,
according to what I am thinking about, reading or doing at the time.
A major stumbling block for me as a poet is the use of metaphor:
perhaps I should try harder to re-direct my thoughts, find a way of
becoming less direct.
A serendipity Skype call from my daughter as I was thinking about
this prompt, produced a glimmer of an idea. They are going to the
library this afternoon to meet an astronomer. As this is a subject of
which I am totally ignorant, and have never really thought about properly,
I decided it might form the basis of a poem outside my comfort zone.
I put a metaphorical pin into a random Google search.
An hour into the writing, and I realise that though the theme may be
something with which I am unfamiliar, my normal style seems to be creeping
in. Can I change something inherent in my personality? You will be
the judges of that. If the metaphor is indecipherable, you may find my
source material here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(moon)

If you click on the picture, the beauty of the scene becomes clearer.

Streaking with Pandora

A while ago, a voyager
found a teardrop in a ring.
Faithfully it circled,
spread dark streamers
on the host silhouette.
Spiralling, swirling,
notched and kinked, the ring
marked by the passing
of its shepherd satellite:
a tiny Titan, texture and colour
of sorbet, frozen meringue.
In orbital dance, two teardrops
do-si-do and skip
around their gloomy parent,
trailing footprints.