| The Navigators | ||
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. 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. 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. 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
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