Pluto
By Maggie Dietz
Don't feel small. We all have
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 unmoved, your companion.
Copyright Credit: Maggie Dietz, "Pluto" from That Kind of Happy. Copyright © 2016 by The University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: That Kind of Happy (The University of Chicago Press, 2016)