The Sestina of KT

If they could only see her face
and the pride in executing these techniques.
Was she a work horse freed from her stable?
No! She is as free as the optical bird
flying above the Earth. “Oh Hubble!
I’ve come to fix your trouble!”

Nation: take time and trouble
to see freedom upon the face
of the attendant of Hubble;
with extraordinary skillful technique
holding a caged wing of the broken bird
drifting downtide toward a distinguished stable.

It takes an astronaut with style so stable
to considers it no trouble
to liberate a fellow solar bird:
reflections of white diamonds in the face-
mask of a sorceress, practicing her technique,
on the broken parts of Hubble.

Caged in her two hands is Hubble,
reconnoitered in its high tech stable
responding to input of dexterous technique:
There is nothing trivial about this trouble.
Road lights are maps of highways on the face-
plate. “How high am I?” asks this American bird.

The wings flap and waver as the paneled bird
escapes her hands. She looks down on Hubble.
The muscles relax: a smile on the face
of a woman who is able, to stand in the stable
of the horses of Apollo. It is no trouble
going forth with privileged technique.

She found her own working techniques
as her tired, heated wings, like a bird
of prey, were cooled by the flowing troubled
draught. She prays for answers from Hubble,
in a universe which may be expanding or stable;
to report the narrations on time’s face.

A rollout of new technique re expresses Hubble
as this thunderbird escapes by a flaming stable.
No more trouble upon this angel’s face.

************************

Written for:

Matt Quinn challenged us to a Sestina. I wrote this in 1993, when astronaut Kathryn Thronton fixed the Hubble Telescope along with her fellow astronauts.

The other astronauts called her KT. She teaches at University of Virginia now.

Here NASA bio:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/thornt-k.html

Her bio currently at UVA/Engineering Department

http://www.virginia.edu/facultyexperts/expert.php?id=437