Ray Rasmussen

Space Junk & Cob Webs

A news headline, “Space Junk Keeps Fallin’ on My Head,” reminds me of a favourite song and so I read on. The article warns that “if you knew what was going on above your head, you probably wouldn’t sleep at night.”

I was already having problems sleeping, with spiders spiraling down for a midnight snack, the cat jumping on the bed at odd hours, nightmares from those horror flicks I shouldn’t have watched, and rehearsing over and over again what I might have said instead in my arguments with her.

I now have even more to worry about. Based on information from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), I learn there are “a whooping 1,217,000 objects including whole spacecrafts” ready to plunge to the earth (and possibly into my home). Even a small grain of space dust will be moving so fast that it can punch through the ceiling. And what would a whole spacecraft do? I wonder.

I call NASA and ask whether they can direct one of the objects at the spider that successfully hides every time I reach for the fly swatter. The less than helpful NASA agent replies that the objects fall at random, and abruptly hangs up.

don’t worry, spider,
NASA has
poor aim

dusk
the moon dangerously
close to the horizon

Notes:

Haibun originally published in Bottle Rockets.

The haiku is modeled on Issa’s "Don't worry spiders / I keep house / casually," trans. Robert Hass.

The song’s title and first line is, “Raindrops keep falling on my head,” by B.J. Thomas.