And there you are.

[JohnS]

(Edit - new first stanza and some other detail changes)

I’ve come so far,
past the icy fringe of outer rings,
past lifeless moons, pulsating stars;
I stop and drift.
And there you are,

a smear of blue and improbable green,
wrapped in breath so thin
I marvel that anything inside it dares to dream.
I've studied a thousand worlds
from pock-marked rocks to acid clouds and iron plains
and none of them do this thing you do: radiate.
Not with flame. With something I can’t explain.
I have mapped your poles and latitudes,
I've watched the lights you string along your coasts at night,
heard you argue about how to divide a thing
and then call it your own.
I've heard all the thoughts you launch into the void —
those urgent, beautiful, ridiculous dispatches about love,
and sport,
and the price of eggs.

I confess I don't know what to feel.
My people gave up feeling long ago —
we reasoned it away —
yet here I hover, instruments gone quiet,
studying a species barely born but builds cathedrals
and makes war
and weeps at music it composed itself.

I should move on.
There are other systems to study.
I have the data I came for.
But I linger in the dark above your clouds,
the way you linger over something beautiful,
afraid that if you look away too long,
it will be gone.