Where We Wish to Go

What do you mean by that distance
when I cannot walk it,
when it cannot be traversed
by the strongest rocket engine?


When it would take not a lifetime,
or ten thousand lifetimes,
but lifetimes the weight
of a sizable planet to make it there?


If I started walking now, or even flying
my life would be demonstrably shrunken
to a point on a point by the distance,
the air would be able to take me.


The sheer erosion of travel
necessitates we become living giants,
able to withstand cosmic winds,
able to hold our own in the thick.


We then might find a fold in things
in which to glide, we might soar
within a crevice of the sound
making up all things.


We might then be able to find ourselves there,
in that place that calls us,
where life, more life might be possible,
not only in writing, underneath the same skies.


We might actually arrive in this new, fresh
planet, the sky changed, the colors unnamed,
the moons with their sisterhood, the suns
casting warm rays upon our gloating faces.


Then we might destroy it, an old tale,
take another faraway floating planet hostage
to our rapacious endeavors, traveling
mind-defying distances to bring it
 
to a premature,
human-
glorious,
night.