Sedna
Kimiko Hahn
Come to find out, Sedna,
is the Inuit woman,
whose father cast her from their kayak,
thus transforming her into the spirit of the sea—
but also the name of 2003 VB12,
a planet or something beyond Pluto.
It is the first body to be discovered
in the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical region
of icy objects that become comets.
But questions remain: how
can a region be hypothetical?
how can a scientist not know
what a planet is? how could a father
throw his daughter from a kayak
even if she did write poetry
that hurt his feelings?
I am not sorry.
He always said, art comes first.
But that is a murky region
for fathers and daughters—
what comes first.
And what my daughters wish to know is
did she drown for his sake
or to learn how depths betray?
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