Here it is against a backdrop of fast stars
When we focus, everything else swarms past
An unknown object we captured
Without meaning to
For scientists, it has been here three years
And it will leave in April, sometime
Off again to cuddle into other gravity, they think
Stronger, or oddly more suited to orbit something else
It is too small to settle down, stable, it pervades, unseen
We wash our hands and wear cloth masks
We inspect it with our stone tools
It turns over by itself
We can imagine a solid rocky mass
An alien virus for those of us with DNA
But look – it is a rocket booster from 18 years ago
Evolved from a larger, more expected thing
And we stand on the ground and cough and spin.