As useless as a sterile seed inside
a pod, the astronaut looks into space
while the dark side of the blue world passes.
The silent radio, the gerbil cage
now empty, even gauges bobbing loose
no longer trouble her. A spider spins
a nearly perfect web inside his box.
There behind precise lines of rivets
that seal the silver rocket’s seams,
she lives the only life she has. The sun
appears to rise in a traceable steady arc
from below the narrow edge of atmosphere.
In forty-five minutes the flaming ball erupts,
reaches its apex, and falls back through the spectrum
to disappear as though eclipsed beyond
the porthole fogged with her breath. The last weather.
Pushing away from the opening full of Earth,
she rebounds against the walls and floats to her bed
where she will dream of barometric pressure,
a door slammed shut by the wind, a rolling stone.
