2001 KX76

Far out past Neptune and Pluto,
where Sol shines fainter
than Venus in our dawn,
there is only cold, darkness,
and a wisp of solar wind.

Out here, in a mysterious realm
we call "The Kuiper Belt",
a million giant icy spheres
orbit through the silence.

These are the Ancient Ones,
condensed five billion years ago
from a cocoon that birthed
our star, our world.
Unlike planets further in,
they shunned wind, waves, lava,
the upheavals of evolution,
and preserved the primordial state
from which they coalesced.

Out here, where Jupiter
is a crackle of static
in the radio sea,
where Earth is a blue-white droplet
in the ocean,
one feels the winds from many stars.

Out here, one is an errant child
of Sol,
and a citizen
of the Cosmos.

Scott Speck
08/25/2001