Time running out (of Space)

As I am leafing through my notes parked under a shedding oak tree

about the Explorations of Rocket Science on a rare heat wave October day

while waiting for my daughter to be let out of high school, which is 

adjacent to the community pool, where I am parked illegally 

between the hours of 11 and 5, Monday thru Friday-this includes this Tuesday

I guess unless I am there to take a plunge or have some membership. 

The lot is more than half empty. My daughter, a junior two ways, 

sits in AP Spanish class right now staring out the window 

over the pool toward the football field. How do I know? 

She told me. She does this. 

And I also know she too, can faintly hear the band practicing to the right 

of me on the field, just beyond the backs of the rows of bleachers.

The metronome fills in all the blanks. 

I look down to scrutinize and find "Non est ad astra mollis e terris via" 

scribbled in blue, this was Seneca who said-

"There is no easy way to the stars from earth"

And I stress over more pressing matters such as;

escape velocity, nominal thrust levels, specific impulses and loop momenta.

I am hyper aware of my SSA, or Space Situational Awareness and forget scattering

all together be cause time is running out and I never explained why I started to 

tell you what I realized with the help of a metronome and nostalgic thoughts 

of leaving home, crossing thresholds and hitting all the right notes, or passing them-

the minutes that is or by taking notes, making maps and studying plans 

to abort this mission none control in seconds or firsts

if something go catastrophically wrong or if lives were in serious jeopardy. 

A rocket trying to break geostationary orbit must be tight,

ruts and steady beats, white noise and dark matter mixes and commingles and

like all subsequent attempts, it is easier the next time. 

Older modeling has been shown to spontaneously implode, 

or make (more) matter I think...

Alarm-no bell-

my junior walks toward me,  and the pen is drying, 

all further exploration has been scrapped to be recycled as cacophony. 

Image credit By נאס"א [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.