“The New Horizon” by Christopher Fox Graham

I performed two poems at Lowell Observatory's annual I ❤ Pluto Festival Saturday, Feb. 15, at the Orpheum Theatre. The featured guests were Adam Nimoy, a television director and son of the late actor Leonard Nimoy; Alan Stern, Ph.D., Principal Investigator of the New Horizons Mission to Pluto; comet-hunter David Levy, who co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (D/1993 F2) with Flagstaff scientists Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker.

This was the first of the two poems I wrote for the event. It pairs as a trilogy with my 2012 poem "Dear Pluto" about the planet and my 2016 poem "Clyde Tombaugh" about the planet's discoverer, who first viewed the planet from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.

Dr. Alan Stern emailed me after the I ❤ Pluto Festival:

"Dear Christopher,

Thanks a bunch for these, they are wonderful pieces of art and I am grateful for you sending them so I can share in our team.

Hope to see you again in Flag someday (and hopefully before Pluto’s 100th)!

Very best,

-Alan"

“The New Horizon”

by Christopher Fox Graham

amid the infinite dark

400 billion points of light burn —

93 million miles from one unremarkably ordinary star,

the first snap-crack of amino acids

move and grow, 

seeking something beyond 

the first horizon 

of its salt pond tide pool

the drive to expand, experience, explore

written at inception into RNA

the hero’s journey inscribed in all cells since

we’re here, now, because “here” wasn’t enough

our ancestors sought what’s over next horizon

the first fish to set foot on land 

the first therapsid to walk upright

the first mammal to emerge in the shadow of the last dinosaur

the first primate to step onto the savannah

the first human family to leave the only tribe 

to start a new one

the first caravan to cross the desert

the first ship to leave the safety of shore

the first astronaut to lose sight of the Earth

beyond the edge of the dark side of the Moon

mystery, adventure, fate, fortune and future

are always over the hopeful horizon 

"Earthrise," taken on Dec. 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders

this here, this sphere of home, 

this pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam

is all we know, every human being who ever was, 

every hunter, forager, peasant, king, inventor, explorer, 

"superstar", "supreme leader," hero, coward, 

dreamer, destroyer, saint, sinner, genocide and miracle

every mother and father, broken heart and forever love story,

every living thing 

from that first cell

to your hopeful child

is here, 

on this grain of sand in the dark

the breadth of my palm from our singular sun

"The Pale Blue Dot"

but out there are more worlds with unseen horizons

so we peer into the dark

unafraid of what we may find 

cast out our messages in bottles

to send photos of the spheres 

and their untouched horizons back home

so we can wonder at their beauty

but out along the edge

beyond our brother Mars,

the great Jupiter 

and ringed Saturn

fraternal twins Neptune and Uranus

is the ninth horizon

discovered by a Kanas boy 

who called Flagstaff home

Clyde Tombaugh [Feb. 4, 1906-Jan. 17, 1997]

that far out, the sun that made life possible here

is a point of light,

but barely much more

though it holds Pluto in orbit like a prodigal son

astronomers-turned-archers 

sent New Horizons to see Clyde Tombaugh’s discovery —

we sent a piece of him, too

his ashes in a capsule 

no bigger 

than a thumb

132524 APL (2002 JF56)

it waved hello to asteroid 132524 APL,

swam through the swirling orbits of Jupiter’s 95 moons

like a sober freshman navigating a nightclub dance floor

with a sweaty fake ID, 

hoping not to be noticed,

popping paparazzi photos 

of Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa

Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto

then, hooked by the weight, 

turned left, 

passing the orbits of the outer planets

to the final horizon

to this 

mote of dust

New Horizons passes through the Pluto system at about 30,800 mph, passing within 40,000 miles of Pluto on Monday, July 13, 2015.

in the blink of an eye

Robin Hood could loose an arrow into a bullseye

and send a second

to split the first at a 100 paces

but teams of technicians on earth

could split the orbit

of Pluto and Charon

at 30,000 miles per hour

from 2 billion miles away 

closer than Nix, Kerberos, Hydra and Styx

had ever been

We named everything — 

maculae after the gods of death 

who rule permanent horizons 

Cadejo, Meng Po and Morgoth

fluctus after those 

who journeyed to the underworlds 

of a dozen mythologies,

Mpobe, Dioynsus, Xanthius

plains after satellites 

Sputnik, Rosetta, and Ranger, Chandrayaan, Hiten and Yutu 

who broke the bonds of earth,

for the dreamers uncontent to be held back by the old horizons

we named the hills and mountains 

Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, 

Zheng He, Bessie Coleman, Muhammad al-Idrisi,
Junko Tabei, Juan Sebastián Elcano,
Thor Heyerdahl and the Wright brothers

craters and regions after those 

who stared into the abyss

Percival Lowell, Viktor Safronov, Michael Belton

free from nationality, 

all sharing a singular horizon

we saved the welcoming heart 

for Tombaugh

the boy whose heart
kept New Horizons warm in the dark

warm, and fundamentally human

because “here” was never enough

beyond Pluto

we sought one last horizon at Arrokoth 

the "Ultima Thule" on our map

Arrokoth, informally known as Ulitma Thule.

now 4.6 billion miles from a lost horizon

it will never see again

is our message in a bottle

proof that “here” is never enough

for a cell or a species

our New Horizons are infinite

Departure shot of Pluto by New Horizons, showing Pluto's atmosphere backlit by the Sun. consists mainly of nitrogen, with minor amounts of methane and carbon monoxide. The blue color is close to what a human eye would have seen, and is caused by layers of haze in the atmosphere 

Notes:

"Earthrise" was taken on Dec. 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders at 16:39:39.3 UTC. The Apollo 8 crew consisted of Anders, Frank Borman and James Lovell. Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8's historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts:

Anders used a highly modified Hasselblad 500 EL camera with an electric drive. The camera had a simple sighting ring, rather than the standard reflex viewfinder, and was loaded with a 70 mm film magazine containing custom Ektachrome film developed by Kodak. Anders had been photographing the lunar surface with a 250 mm lens; the lens was subsequently used for the Earthrise images. While the image is best known with the moon horizon on the bottom of the image and the Earth rising above, it was actually shot as it appears here, in line with the lunar north pole. It was later rotated 95 degrees to place the moon horizon at the bottom of the photo.

"The Pale Blue Dot" is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan's book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space," in which he wrote: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," which is sampled and paraphrased in the poem.

132524 APL (2002 JF56): The two "spots" in this image are two images of asteroid 132524 APL (2002 JF56) taken on June 11, bottom, at a distance of 3.36 million kilometers, and June 12, 2006, the top, taken at 1.34 million kilometers. The asteroid is about 2.5 kilometers in diameter.

Galilean Moons: The montage of Jupiter's four large and diverse Galilean satellites as seen by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on the New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter in late February 2007. The four moons are, from left to right: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The images have been scaled to represent the true relative sizes of the four moons and are arranged in their order from Jupiter.

Robin Hood: If the 4.8 billion-kilometer distance to Pluto when New Horizons passed through was reduced to 100 paces (200 to 400 feet depending on stride, or ~100 yards, i.e., the length of a football field), the 40,000-mile (64,373 km) distance between Pluto and New Horizons when it passed within 40,000 miles would be 1.22 millimeters. On that scale, the 2.7-meter New Horizons probe would be 2 nanometers, smaller than the diameter of a strand of DNA.

486958 Arrokoth: (2014 MU69) or Ultima Thule is a trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt object. Arrokoth became the farthest and most primitive object in the Solar System visited by a spacecraft whenNew Horizons conducted a flyby on Jan. 1, 2019. It is made of two lobes, a smaller "walnut" and a larger "pancake." The two conjoined lobes indicate Arrokoth used to be two separate bodies that stuck together after a gentle, slow-speed collision. The Latin "Ultima Thule" means "farthest Thule," a semi-mythical place in Greek and Roman mythology located in the far north, usually an island, possibly Iceland, the British Isles, the Shetland Isles or the Orkney Islands.

I'm performing at the I ❤ Pluto Festival on Feb. 18, 93 years after Pluto was discovered from Flagstaff's Lowell Observator

I'm honored that Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff has asked me to perform the poems "To the Planet Formerly Known as Pluto" and "Clyde Tombaugh" at the 2023 I ❤ Pluto Festival at the Orpheum Theater on Feb. 18.

I'll be sharing the stage with Lowell Observatory Historian Kevin Schindler, who will relive Clyde Tombaugh’s day of discovering Pluto, 93 years ago.

The keynote is Astronaut Nicole Stott, who flew with the space shuttle Discovery on missions STS-128 and STS-133, space shuttle Atlantis on STS-129 and twice to the Internation Space Station on Expedition 20 and Expedition 21. Stott will talk about her career and wrote a book "Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – And Our Mission to Protect It."

She creatively combines the awe and wonder of her spaceflight experience with her artwork to inspire everyone’s appreciation of our role as crewmates here on Spaceship Earth.

She is a veteran NASA Astronaut with two spaceflights and 104 days as a crewmember on both the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle. Personal highlights of her time in space include performing a spacewalk (10th woman to do so), flying the robotic arm to capture the first free-flying HTV, painting a watercolor (now on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum), working with her international crew on science that is all about improving life on Earth, and of course the life changing view of our home planet. She is also a NASA Aquanaut. In preparation for spaceflight she was a crew member on an 18-day saturation dive mission at the Aquarius undersea laboratory.

Nicole believes that the international model of peaceful and successful cooperation we have experienced in the extreme environments of space and sea holds the key to the same kind of peaceful and successful cooperation for all of humanity here on Earth.

On her post-NASA mission, Nicole is a co-founder of the Space for Art Foundation — uniting a planetary community of children through the awe and wonder of space exploration and the healing power of art.

"Dear Pluto"

By Christopher Fox Graham

April 20, 2012

To the planet formerly known as Pluto,

Though we will never meet

I think I know you

I am a speck of organic matter

standing on the surface of your sister

my people and I

are converted from ice and dust

electrified into existence

by the mere circumstances

of your sister Earth and nephew Moon

dancing with tide pools

when they were still in their infancy

mere molecules slammed together

and held onto each other in strings

which took billions of years

to mistake themselves in their reproduction

to form this all-too-young boy

sending you this letter

forgive my impetuousness, dear Pluto

but compared to you,

I only have a second

before this organic matter caves in on itself

becomes dust and water to form something new

all I have is my voice

and I beg you to listen

because although we will never meet

I think I know you

I’m not sure if you will receive this letter

In the time it takes to reach you,

I could bounce between here and the sun 16 times

measured on your timescale

my country is not even a year old yet

You’re farther away from the sun

than any of your siblings

and while the rest of those planets circulate in lockstep

in the same elliptical orbit

yours is full of highs and lows

as you rise above the plane

and drop beneath it

because you’re either bipolar

of just refuse to conform

be glad you’ve been able to do it so long

here, those who are different

either by choice or accident

wind up getting bullied, brutalized or crucified

and while I could explain what those words mean

let’s hope that by the time one of us stands on your surface

we’ve forgotten what they mean, too

At Lowell Observatory in the hills overlooking Flagstaff

astronomer Clyde Tombaugh picked you out from the black

he watched you wander at the edge of the solar system

and noted how you keep your distance

from everyone else like you

I know what it feels like to be alone, too

there are times when people here

believe the sun is so far away they don’t feel warm anymore

and they stare out into the black

and wonder what’s like to just let go

I’m glad you’ve stayed with us, dear Pluto

you show us that even when the universe is terrifying cold

there’s some light to hold on to

some reason to keep moving

and even out there you and your moon Charon

prove you can find love anywhere

since we began to worship stars

we have followed your siblings

the rocky worlds, the gas giants

to us, if they were bigger than an asteroid or moon

and weren’t furnaces like the sun,

they were a planet

deserving the name of a god

an astrological house

and a certain amount of inexplicable reverence

you were nine children of a yellow sun

on the rural edge of the galaxy

but now because your size doesn’t fit new rules

the International Astronomical Union on my world

has decided you are no longer a planet

you don’t meet the qualifications anymore

you no longer govern an astrological house

they took you away from you were to us

because some ink on paper said you didn’t matter anymore

they put you a box labeled “dwarf planets” or “Plutoids”

only to be ostracized from your brothers and sisters

by faceless strangers at the stroke of pen

here, we label people too,

segregate them into boxes

based on the color of their skins

or which one of those gods they called out to while dying

or whether they love someone with the same or different parts

or in what way they their throats make noises to communicate

or even by where they were born

as if point of origin means anything

on a planet spinning 1,600 kilometers per second,

where specks like me have wandered to every part of it

tell me, dear Pluto

can you see the borders of our nations from out there?

it seems that’s all we can see down here sometimes

can you tell us apart?

if we one day reach you

dig our fingers into your dirt

would you care about what language we used

to tell each other 

how beautiful the moment was?

Dear Pluto,

I know what it feels like to be small

I’m still a little boy, too

playing grown-up games

wondering what happens

when there’s nothing left to orbit anymore

Though we will never meet

you don’t have to answer this letter if it ever reaches you

but I think you know me,

I am a tiny voice on your sister Earth

and you are Pluto, the ninth planet of the sun

"Clyde Tombaugh"

A companion poem to "Dear Pluto"

January 27, 2016

The Kansas boy stares into the sky

counting stars with his fingers

pretending he can touch each one

playing piano keys with constellations

the spheres make music most us will never hear

but he orchestrates symphonies

oboes in Orion

clarinets in Cancer

violins in Virgo

percussion rumbling off supernova timpanies

snare drums on the skin of black holes

while spinning quasars keep perfect rhythm

the boy, now a teen measures stars with his telescopes

built from leftover parts

shaping steel and mirrors

to bend the light down into his hands

he wants to hold the weight of stardust 

in his palm

the boy, now a man,

works on Mars Hill

the evening shift at Lowell Observatory

scouring the images for differences

one single speck out of place

but these were skies he could paint from memory

on a night like tonight

a cold February

the man became a boy again

when he found a spot 

hide-and-seeking with him

telling him the stars and planets were looking back at us

an undiscovered instrument 

making music he was the first to hear

a ninth symphony he held for a moment

heard alone, echoing in solitary discovery

before he shared it with the world

76 years later,

nine years after his death

mankind's ship in a bottle

broke the bonds of earth to reach out

and find New Horizons

in the cold dark of space

in a case no bigger than heart of a boy

now 2.97 billion miles from Kansas

from Mars Hill

from our entire history

are the ashes of the man who first heard the music

after six years alone in the dark

he traveled farther than anyone in history

to visit a world unseen by human eyes

and last July, the man became a boy again

matching his imagination to the globe in front of him

visiting an undiscovered country held for a moment

a solitary discovery

before he shared it with the world

at that distance, signals and light take 4 and half hours to reach home

in those hours, 

Clyde Tombaugh,

you had a world captivated in the silence

waiting 4 billion years

for someone to visit

what did you talk about?

did she ask 

what the sun feels like 

when so much closer?

how it warms your skin in summer?

did she tell you her story?

what it’s like to be so far away, alone in night?

how her years pass in centuries?

did you tell her about us?

about Kansas

about Mars Hill

about what it feels like to hold stardust in your palm?

did you tell her there were 7 billion boys and girls back home

waiting to see her for the first time?

was she eager to meet you since she first saw you

playing hide and seek with your telescopes

or counting stars with your fingers

or did she just sing a song?

one half of an unfinished duet

a harmony you already knew

something slow and beautiful

a secret 

only two lovers 

can understand

Astronaut Nicole Stott, from right; Alden Tombaugh, son of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh; Alden's wife Cherylee Tombaugh; poet Christopher Fox Graham; Athena Zelda Nebula Skye Sylvia Diana Fox Graham; and Kevin Schindler, historian of Lowell Observatory, who organized the Night of Discovery event at the Orpheum Theater in Flagstaff.
I was honored to perform poems about Pluto and Clyde Tombaugh. Alden was very complimentary and asked for copies (which I had pre-printed and shared with Kevin, Alden and Nicole).

Athena had a great time and ate loads of food. Lowell's senior astronomer also announced a 2,430-km diameter asteroid between Jupiter and Mars is now officially called (28724) Stott.

"Clyde Tombaugh" by Christopher Fox Graham

"Clyde Tombaugh"

A companion poem to "Dear Pluto"

The Kansas boy stares into the sky
counting stars with his fingers
pretending he can touch each one
playing piano keys with constellations

Clyde Tombaugh

the spheres make music most us will never hear
but he orchestrates symphonies
oboes in Orion
clarinets in Cancer
violins in Virgo
percussion rumbling off supernova timpanies
snare drums on the skin of black holes
while spinning quasars keep perfect rhythm

the boy, now a teen measures stars with his telescopes
built from leftover parts
shaping steel and mirrors
to bend the light down into his hands
he wants to hold the weight of stardust in his palm

the boy, now a man,
works on Mars Hill
the evening shift at Lowell Observatory
scouring the images for differences
one single speck out of place
but these were skies he could paint from memory

on a night like tonight
a cold February
the man became a boy again
when he found a spot hide-and-seeking with him
telling him the stars and planets were looking back at us
an undiscovered instrument making music he was the first to hear
a ninth symphony he held for a moment
heard alone, echoing in solitary discovery
before he shared it with the world

76 years later,
nine years after his death
mankind's ship in a bottle
broke the bonds of earth to reach out
and find New Horizons
in the cold dark of space

Clyde Tombaugh's ashes aboard New Horizons

in a case no bigger than heart of a boy
now 2.97 billion miles from Kansas
from Mars Hill
from our entire history
are the ashes of the man who first heard the music

after six years alone in the dark
he traveled farther than anyone in history
to visit a world unseen by human eyes
and last July, the man became a boy again
matching his imagination to the globe in front of him
visiting an undiscovered country held for a moment
a solitary discovery
before he shared it with the world


at that distance, signals and light take 4 and half hours to reach home
in those hours, Clyde Tombaugh,
you had a world captivated in the silence
waiting 4 billion years
for someone to visit

what did you talk about?

did she ask what the sun feels like when so much closer?
how it warms your skin in summer?

did she tell you her story?
what it’s like to be so far away, alone in night?
how her years pass in centuries?

did you tell her about us?
about Kansas
about Mars Hill
about what it feels like to hold stardust in your palm?
did you tell her there were 7 billion boys and girls back home
waiting to see her for the first time?

was she eager to meet you since she first saw you
playing hide and seek with your telescopes
or counting stars with your fingers

or did she just sing a song?
one half of an unfinished duet
a harmony you already knew
something slow and beautiful
a secret only two lovers can understand