Martin Briggs

Orbits
 
Unhurriedly racing, serenely retracing,                 
retreating, returning, recircling, recurring,
a steady procession on unclouded nights  
of dated, redundant and dead satellites:
 
guided and guiding, covertly gliding,
transmitting, receiving, enmeshing and weaving,
impostors and upstarts congesting the skies, 
unheavenly bodies in stellar disguise:
 
silently winking, tracking and blinking,
listening, prying, brazenly spying,
terrestrial malice released into space,
detritus of a discredited race: 
 
machined engineering precisely careering,
punctually pushing through starfields, onrushing 
on faultless trajectories year after year,
like gnats dancing round a cerulean sphere:
 
floating not flying, downgazing and eyeing
as darkness comes creeping on hemispheres sleeping,
gravity's prisoners pass overhead
as, journeying eastward, you turn in your bed. 

Martin Briggs only began writing in earnest after retiring from a career in public administration, since when his work has appeared in various periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic.  He lives in Suffolk, England.