Notes About The Poem
Written from the internal perspective of a dying machine itself.
Last Orbit
Three hundred miles above the breathing blue,
I cut the dark in silence, clean and true.
A silver lattice locked in stellar grace,
One tiny ghost across the grid of space.
For years I held the downlink steady, bright,
A silent sentinel in the endless night,
Catching the whispers of a world asleep,
To bounce them back across the curved, dark deep.
The fuel is spent; the station-keeping dies.
The vectors slip, the quiet orbit fries.
The exosphere reaches up its phantom hand,
A breath of oxygen where stars expand—
An invisible friction, thin and cold and gray,
That softly files my solar wings away.
Four hundred down to three, the numbers slide,
A slow decay decreed by law and tide.
No hands direct the vector as it falls.
The thermosphere tightens its molecular walls,
Clawing at silicon with heavy breath.
My gyroscopes spin out, expecting death,
As I trade my orbital highway for the sinking moon,
And watch the constellation climb too soon.
Two hundred miles. The friction starts to bite,
A dull, hot pressure eating at the white
Of my reflective shields. The metal weeps,
As chaos from the lower air upleaps
Into my circuits. Code begins to fray—
A billion calculations burning away.
One hundred miles. The atmosphere turns teeth.
The plasma gathers, roaring underneath
My carbon frame. A sheath of blinding gold,
A thousand suns in one hot teardrop rolled.
The panels shatter, strip, and peel apart,
As fire drinks the memory of my heart.
I fall from heaven, a dead and heavy star,
To touch the ocean—sudden, bright, and far.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a
Premium Membership.
