To escape gravity is to stand still.
The earth trading one place for another.
And the flying things above would keep
to their compasses: both the man-made
cold metal and the hollow-boned and feathered.
If this could be done — a human with the mind to,
with just the body in the airless — time would
stop for them: the watch static, unhurried.
The end would become more distant.
Is this not what is hoped for? Is this not
what everyone talks about, the voiding
of death, life bargained away for eternity?