N.E.O.

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.