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.

Thomas Dolby/ Dr Fiorella Terenzi
Lost Toy People, Inc. (ASCAP),Terenzi Music (ASCAP)