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 bureaucrat
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
On 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