Richard St. John: Pluto 2

After the action of the International Astronomers Union 8/24/06

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Poor Pluto, icy stone, never so lovely as Venus

or possessing Jupiter’s pull.  Dragging along

your equal moon, that old cold pagan dance-partner,

Charon.  Still tangled up with Neptune’s elliptic

and its inner tides.  Second-tier, our mirror,

unable even to clear your wobbly orbit of debris.

Yet, for all of it, the sun’s faint ray still falls

on your gravelly eye.      A great debate – and bang! –

you’re X’ed from the canon by the IAU, in Prague

not Rome, but still the same: too many minor objects

threatening the cosmic balance.  It’s just as Irenaeus

argued and the holy fathers, in their wisdom, then declared

the gnostic gospels bogus – full of outlandish sayings

like:  “Pick up a stone, and you will find me there.”

From Each Perfected Name by Richard St. John (Truman State). Copyright 2015. Reprinted in Vox Populi by permission of the author.