Near Earth Orbit

Feb 13 2019

Astronauts circle the earth

400 km up.

At a sensible speed

a 4 hour trip

that would take me just south of Duluth.

Where the northern plains are flat,

and farmer's fields

parcel-out the land

like an heirloom quilt.

Just a short jaunt

and you could kick-back in weightless free-fall.

How at so short a distance

this massive planet

might just as well have vanished,

its gravity as weak

as the attraction between small everyday objects;

this ottoman and chair, resting quietly,

human bodies

like yours and mine

who feel more push than pull.

Just an afternoon drive.

To where astronauts effortlessly float,

turning somersaults

on steadily softening bones.

And where spilled water

forms large erratic drops

wobbling freely through the air.

High enough

to barely skirt the atmosphere

that blankets planet earth.

That warm and wet

cauldron of weather

that protects us from outer space,

turning the sky

from cold black void

to softly luminous blue.

Imagine

a single layer of plastic wrap

around a standard basketball

and you will understand its frailty.

Thinner, even, than gravity;

but neither as inviolable as physical law

nor nearly as constant.

The air we share

with every living thing

in the entire known universe,

breathing in

as they breathe out.

And the only place

where the most complicated object ever devised

by man or god

is at home,

calculating trajectories

calibrating oxygen

contemplating purpose.

The human brain,

utterly dependent

on mother earth.

Our envoy to the cosmos

is a cramped ship filled with stale air

in near earth orbit.

Close up

it looks like a stick insect

in luminous white;

solar collectors, like random appendages,

modules bolted together

as if improvised.

While from down here

on this endless stretch of asphalt

between tall rows of corn

it's a bright light in the night sky,

moving steadily against

the background of stars.

So close

it has barely left the surface;

astronauts, looking down on planet earth

as it advances beneath them

like a vast unfolding scroll

in brilliant blues and greens.

And so far

all an astronaut can see

is a deep dark void,

looking out

on the utter blackness

of outer space.

Astronauts return from space transformed, full of wonder and awe. We talk about outer space, the exhilaration of weightlessness, the challenge of life support. Yet the international space station is only 400 km up, the equivalent of an afternoon drive. So near earth orbit is hardly “outer” space.

Our furthest frontier is so close to home; yet despite the proximity of this outpost of humanity, it still takes all of our technological expertise and ingenuity to sustain life there. Which shows just how tethered we are to mother earth. And also gives us a perspective on earth's own fragility: the thinness of its life-giving atmosphere; its smallness and singular place in a vast indifferent universe that's cold and dark and timeless.

So the paradox of near earth orbit is that it's both close and far. I've visited this paradox in previous poems, but wanted another go at it. My starting point was the weakness of gravity: how it seems so powerful, here on the surface, where it effectively rules our lives; yet how it also so quickly peters out.

Close and far, strong and weak. How physics is often counter-intuitive; how common sense may be common, but isn't always either sensible or true.