We found a new world,
yesterday.
Ordained with holy numbers
and d-a-s-h-e-s-
by modern priests in
blanket
white
cloth.
Pious, singularly
unromantic men.
Reaching for this sphere
it is into an unnamed sea
amid unmounted peaks
I shall fall,
a willfully disobedient
boy who drowned
with a hunger
that surpassed
all worldly sustenance.
Though perhaps it’s for the best
I’ll never walk its corrugated
G a s e o u s
surface,
for an epoch of chastity
would be corrupt
by my abrasive soles, my cutting
words, my fallible conscience
and mortal skin.
600 light-years?
I’ll save us both the effort.
©Thomas Gabriel