New Horizons Passes Pluto, July 14, 2015

And on into the so-called dark. 
Back home, a so-called common 

yellowthroat flickers like a lit Zippo. 
The Audubon Field Guide reports 

this chunky round-headed songbird 
has succeeded by being a nonconformist, 

taking up residence where few warblers would. 
In open marshes and practically every reed-bed 

and patch of cattails from coast to coast 
its low rough witch’s croon 

puts a pinprick in the glade tapestry. 
Back home, the President beneath 

blue-gelled overheads explains 
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, 

we did some things that were wrong. 
We did a whole lot of things 

that were right, but 
we tortured some folks. 

Back home, the speed needed to leave 
our solar system is called escape velocity. 

Some used to think Pluto was a body calved 
from the belly of Neptune, but New Horizons 

returns evidence it’s likely an agglomeration 
of comets. Like any comet, solar wind 

is gradually blowing Pluto’s surface into space, 
so-called space, laden with a whole lot of things.

JAMES KELLY QUIGLEY

James Kelly Quigley’s poetry has received Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets nominations. Recent work has been published or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, New York Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, SLICE, The American Journal of Poetry, and other places. Say hello at jameskellyquigley.com.