What Goes Around

The heavy vise-like tool
slips from an astronaut's grip.
Released to orbit.
Assumed to
never-to-be-seen-again.

After three days -
a fifteen-pound emergency
looms.

Shuttle rockets fire to avoid
an insipient disaster
almost not seen.

What goes around,
comes around.

                                  September 23, 2011
               Written on the day that pieces of a bus-sized
               chunk of space junk is to hit the earth somewhere.