N.E.O.

(album: The Gate To The Mind's Eye - 1994)

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.