Put a Black Hole Where the Sun Is and the Sun Where the Earth Is

Such a system is not fiction,
Noted the astrophysicist,

But good heavens what temptation
For anyone stitching fictions.

What kind of monster trope is this?
How could a fantasist resist?

Know what would bring that novelist
Back down to ordinary Earth?

The demand that stories be human—
Ordinary readers, that is.

You will have to craft characters
For your burning world in orbit

Around your dormant-black-hole tale,
And they must have human feelings,

Even if they are aliens—
Have humanoid predicaments,

Romances, conflicts, enemies,
Story arcs circling that black hole.

Successful writers realize
Everything in the universe

Amounts to theatrical props
And elaborate prosthetics

For humans, who are not fictions,
Only burning close to isn't.