April 6, 2011: Pluto, Maggie Dietz
Pluto
Maggie Dietz
Don’t feel small. We have all
been demoted. Go on being
moon or rock or orb, buoyant
and distant, smallest craft ball
at Vanevenhoven’s Hardware
spray-painted purple or day-glow
orange for a child’s elliptical vision
of fish line, cardboard and foam.
No spacecraft has touched you,
no flesh met the luster of your
heavenly body. Little cold one, blow
your horn. No matter what you are
planet, and something other than
planet, ancient but not “classical,”
the controversy over what to call you
light-hours from your ears. On Earth
we tend to nurture the diminutive,
root for the diminished. None
of your neighbors knows your name.
Nothing has changed. If Charon’s
not your moon, who cares? She
remains your unmoved companion.
==
On this day in…
2010: Slant, Stephen Dunn
2009: Distressed Haiku, Donald Hall
2008: Question, May Swenson
2007: Song, Adrienne Rich
2006: Scheherazade, Richard Siken
2005: What the Living Do, Marie Howe
