On the news today I learn about
the Kessler syndrome, though it’s over forty years
old–a scientist named Doug said
that right about now
Now
we’ve filled space with too much junk from
space missions and satellites that keep slamming
into each other and breaking into smaller and smaller
pieces. Doug says a paint fleck, or a piece of metal the size of a grain of sand can destroy a satellite or space station and that soon this will make space unusable.
Huh.
I sip around the cracked rim of my coffee cup
chipped from my hasty dishwashing
and discover a poem from Macedonia
Martin, the poet, writes that the city is following us
and says the moon glimpsed between
skyscrapers from a cab to the airport
Will be the thing that stays the same.
So
Before I even finish my morning coffee
I contemplate beautiful words from far away
and destruction brewing in the sky
I must conclude that you and I
ought to stop hunching our shoulders
stop cowering before the unknowns and
Their Inevitable Arrival —showering us
With killing trash and transporting poetry
crickets still sing in the garden
not knowing (do they?)
that there’s a cold snap coming tomorrow
which will stop all songs beneath the hydrangeas
For a long, dark time. But they or
their descendents will (probably)
begin to sing again
next spring
Puff Of Smoke Poems 