[Martin Elster]

I reckon you want us to write new poems. But, though I wrote this one 14 years ago, at least it may (or may not) give you some amusement (which is, after all, the second word of "Drills & Amusements").

What Is a Planet?

What is a planet? No one seems to know.
They found this icy ball larger than Pluto
**way out on the back porch
of the solar system, orbiting as slow,
deliberate and unhurried as a pseudo-
**Olympic snail with torch.

This frozen mass, the heftiest one found
since 1846 circling the sun,
**swims amid the scraps
of the Kuiper Belt, the icy junk surround-
ing Neptune’s revolution; a vast ton
**of stuff all doing laps

like turtles in a relay round their star.
This hunk of ice and dust they had descried
**creeping nine billion miles
away from Sol, shines bright as a gold car
that glistens like a dazzling gem and glid-
**ing over domiciles

and trees and fields and lakes almost too high
for anyone to see; a toy balloon
**beyond the loftiest cloud;
a floater drifting across the jumbo eye
of the solar system like a distant moon
**that joined the comet crowd.

Its temperature would make a penguin freeze
in less time than it takes to say the word
**Antarctica. So bleak
on that small orb! You surely couldn’t sneeze,
for the place has no atmosphere. No bird
**would soar, no human speak.

Now, is this object planet, asteroid,
or something else? They’ve nicknamed the thing Xena.
**Yet Xena’s unaware,
nor would she care about the present void
in rubric in astronomy’s arena
**from which they stare and swear.