Six or Seven Railway Cars of Gravel

Get knocked out of an asteroid
Of a few million tons of rock
By a guided killer satellite.

Gravity, weak as it can be
Among the insignificant
Of mass, was nonetheless enough

To have pulled those stones together
In a loose, globular droplet
Of rock and ice tumbling through space.

Then a team of scientists aimed
And shot a chunk out of its flank
To prove they could protect the Earth

From the next asteroid to dare
To redirect evolution.
Given the scientists evolved

From survivors of the last blow,
This seems like poetic justice.
Gravel, though. Debris. Space rubble.

Midnight skies may look velvety
Between their sparkling lights, but that
Dark conceals a lot of random

Dust and schmutz, the wayside gravel
Of barely, loosely assembled
Similar shapes changing at night.