I brought up my browser
to Google Map the walking distance
from California to Japan.

Once the algorithm
rightly concluded I am no Jesus
and cannot walk on water,

my Mountain View peeps
calculated the ideal hang gliding route,
taking into account wind patterns

and discarded sushi
flung into the stratosphere.
After seven seconds too long,

an up-at-dawn jaunt in the clouds
sprung alive on my screen.
Yet as I stand on this SF shoreline,

the separation of the Pacific Ocean
suddenly stretches into a Kuiper belt divide.
I balk at the waves and the waves

belly laugh back, a tidal entertainment
that a carbon fiber skeleton
could conquer 70 million

cubic miles, a yawning
multiplied into a heliocentric spin.
Here now, my pale Irish body

swoops over Olympus Mons
and dovetails into the vessels
of Jupiter’s bloodshot eye

before finally running to a stop
on Pluto, a rock-ice ball swimming
in a nitrogen and methane atmosphere.

Under the sun’s glare, I slip on my Ray-Bans
and geotag my location with a shout out
to the Roman god of the underworld.

***

Keith Gaboury graduated with a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College in 2013. His poems have appeared in Write From Wrong Online Literary Magazine, Oddball Magazine, and Boston Poetry Magazine. In 2011, he co-founded a social justice-themed online literary magazine, Words Apart. While spending his days as a preschool teacher in Boston, he spends his nights completing a manuscript of science fiction / fantasy-themed poems.