……………………………………………..Collision risks are growing every year
……………………………………………..as the number of objects in orbit
……………………………………………..around Earth proliferate.
………………………………………………………………………—CNN

How can prayers make it through
130 million pieces of space junk
careening and colliding
at 18,000 miles per hour
in an orbital graveyard
bits of broken satellites,
the remains of booster rockets
and wreckage from weapons tests

As violence spreads like head lice
more and more prayers swirl the skies
jostling and jiggling to make it to heaven
and petition the Lord
please one night without sirens
………….wailing us awake
let my daughter learn to walk
………….on her wooden leg
prayers crashing into each other
smoldering in the atmosphere
or plummeting to earth unheard
while angels wait by an empty gate
weeping into feathered wings

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize
nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and The Healing Muse, among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t.