N.E.O.

Near Earth Object.

A solid body whose orbit lies within the orbit of Mars.

Moons Asteroids. Meteorites.

And human debris.

You can see a meteorite almost any night.

Go out to the desert

You might find a piece.

They are pieces of stars,

Same as you and me

They have travelled through space for thousands of years.



Perhaps you will get lucky

but you will never find a piece of Soyuz

or Sputnik or Apollo 9

They are still out there

They are very faint

And the pollution in earths atmosphere

washes out their pale light



Floating without air, without light

or else - charred on the re-entry

They are still out there floating

within the orbit of Mars.



Look at it this way:

a river of space, a ribbon of time

like a burial by a beaurocrat

undercover of a cold war risk.

a cloud of dust-a cloud of rubble

spinning in space on the heels of the Hubble

a parallel, or a temporal rip

in the belly of the Cosmos

somewhere in a hanger

a fossilized finger

stored by the government, hidden from the press

some young top gun s first solo

turned out to be a N.E.O.