So Distant, So Cold…

to please this arctic goddess ghost...

Issuing from a frozen sea
on ice throes under an Inuit sky
once a goddess amid depths
of icy, swirling mysteries
now a point of gleaming light
fleeing from a night's long reach...

Not a full planet, officially, yet…
a planet dwarf so classified
but give her time, upon her bosom
we will surely settle, ride
from seventy-six astronomical units out
to nearly nine-hundred and seventy five…

A trans-Neptunian object flung
along a far elliptical path
around our Sol, the most distant discovered
its orbit nearly twelve-thousand years…

A nice, tidy number, that,
each season lasting four thousand years
or 1.63 million days
in summer a balmy 33K when
the sunlight nips her face just right
scattering from her distant eyes
deep within her icy gaze…

1800 kilometers across
an Oort Cloud giant nearly the size
of Pluto, her surface covered in
a reddish, hydrocarbon sludge…


She issued from the frozen sea
amid ice throes under an Inuit sky
she, a goddess, in depths of icy
frothing, starlit mysteries;
Why now a point of gleaming light
fleeing from her starry reach?

What fated her to a lonely path
spinning far from other gods
still clinging close to father sun
as she wanders one-thousand times
as distant, a million times as far?

Escaping melancholy woes
her hurt less in deep solitude
the heart of a transformed sea goddess
who once dwelled upon Earth’s ocean floor
now sleeps in an Arctic slumber there…

and so it is, an Arctic home
that this goddess travels in
beyond our planet gods, beyond
Neptune's frozen trident tips…

So distant, she, so cold, so far
a frozen world, a frozen heart
and when we meet this frozen host
our touch of warmth, welcome, pleasant
would thaw her chill, and would surely
please this arctic goddess ghost…