Pluto

Tomorrow is the Cluster Talent Show. I'm reading some poems. I've been sifting through poems to find the ones I want to read. Here's one that didn't make the cut but I like.

THERE MAY BE A WORLD BEYOND PLUTO

I read it on the internet just tonight:
"There may be a world beyond Pluto."

Poor Pluto, disgraced and diminished,
labeled less than a planet.
So small, so cold and so, so far away.
Pluto gets forgotten in the mix
of the solar system--demoted and damned
to the outer reaches of the sun.

Pitiful Pluto, so dark and chill--
but then there is the news, spread wide and far:
another world,
three times farther than Pluto from the sun--
we're talking 200 'AU's' from the sun,
based on earth being one AU
since we are still, Galileo not withstanding,
still the center of the universe.

'Planet X', in its leisurely 12,000 year journey around the sun,
would explain mysteries:
like the Kuiper Belt (whatever that is)
and confounding questions of people smarter
than you and me.

And it would give me--maybe you--
another metaphor for lonlinesss.

I no longer need to feel,
from time to tome,
like I'm on Pluto,
so unthinkably far away from comfort and love.
There is another world out there--
even darker, even colder, even more distant
that I can imagine myself
a citizen of....

jgb/6-19-08