To Sail on Stars

What greater wonder can there be than to sail on the stars

Which ancient mariners once used to plot their watery course?

To shuffle off the dust of Earth and turn toward the night?

To seek the beating artery of the ‘verse’s vital force?

Where neither compass nor sextant will point the way to go

Across the dark and star-speckled breast of that mightiest sea!

My only point of reference the blue shore left far behind,

And where I might make land again matters not at all to me.

For I have turned my prow now toward that last lingering frontier,

Where no ocean has been charted and no land mass yet been mapped.

From off the rock that birthed me ‘twixt bluest sea and starry shore,

Whose measurements were taken all, breadth and girth long ago lapped.

Off the edge of every chart where dragons breathe their burning breath,

Where the makers of the maps drew their boundaries of the world.

Where dread lions prey upon man’s inborn fear of the unknown,

I laughing launch my ship upon that last great sea yet unexplored.

Unto an endless night where stars swirl against a velvet black,

And galaxies spiral toward an unseen horizon’s rays!

Upon mighty waves of gravity I steer a silver ship.

And solar winds beat full the sails that carry me away.