On the darkest night of the year
when stars glow like brilliant diamonds
reminding us that we are indeed star dust
that has taken human form on this planet,
we should be grateful for the moonlight
under which tides flow, nocturnal animals
emerge from safe shelters and lovers kiss.
Look up once more then slowly realize that
what you thought were stars are actually
more than 100 million pieces of rockets
and satellites, tools discarded on spacewalks,
junk floating in space.
Here, on this planet, huge landfills stacked high
like mountains with
computers,
electronics,
batteries,
styrofoam,
ink cartridges,
glass bottles,
diapers,
enough paper to fill several decimated forests
and, of course, the toxic poisons released
from human garbage.
The Earth is not large enough to handle this waste.
In a world that can seem like a warehouse of commodities,
where capitalism begs for your dollars, once again
human exceptionalism does not seem to care.
Trash the planet or trash space,
it’s all the same to those in power.
And once all that space junk begins to collide,
sending more satellites into orbit will become
too risky. Without such devices to enhance
communication, predict weather patterns,
bring about scientific breakthroughs.
Even the possibility of intergalactic travel,
the dreams of science fiction writers and
futurists, writers and artists, will fall into
darkness while humans, who once looked
up to the stars for hope and creative
inspiration, protect themselves from
any space junk falling from the sky.
Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and twochapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry.
