The Navigators

Poem: Give the museum your hourglass...

John Harrison 1693 -1776
Give the museum your hourglass.
take minutes;
we second this proposal –
Harrison spends his apprenticeship marking time.
John the Journeyman of our quest for time
Master-craftsman who got all wound up
serving time for the Board of Longitude:
your best clock lost only one second per three days –
your craft stood the test of time.
Elmer Sperry 1860 – 1930
Herman Anschütz-Kaempfer 1872 – 1931
a standing ovation
for the dance to precision,
the Gyroscope:
ballet trio who pirouette on 3 axes
spin-doctor cubed:
pilot who never loses her balance
through vermilion of fog & vertigo;
airborne Ariadne, your life-saving hands hold taut
the golden thread of an unseen horizon.
Walter Hohmann 1880- 1945
in 1925 people were locked up as lunatics
for less than this.
a year before Lufthansa was born
you published Die Erreichbarkeit der Himmelskörper.
Walter turned the 2-body problem into to-body solution:
elegance of the ellipse
elongating along the ecliptic.
Hohmann's music of the spheres
harmonics of gravity boosting us planet by planet.
forty-eight years later
the Tenth Mariner was first to test your theory,
hitch-hiking on resonances from Venus to Mercury
pioneering trajectories for future voyages,
giving scientists
transports of delight.
Ed Belbruno 1951 -
could Ed & the 3-body problem
score a pas de trios for heavenly dancers?
1990: A Muse flew up from Tanegashima
turned into chrysanthemum that circles Earth & Moon.
Hiten, Heaven Flyer, set free her Hagoromo
who flew solo, moon of our Moon.
While Hiten, on wings choreographed by Belbruno
spiralled wider to the fuzzy boundary of infinity:
so changing her course as migrating wild geese
she soared up to take the watch in a higher sky.

--Keith Gottschalk