Poet Marilyn Nelson was raised on military bases and developed a unique literary perspective as a daughter of a Tuskegee Airman. Here, Nelson reads from the fields of praise.

Star fix for Melvin M Nelson, captain, United States Air Force, retired 1917 to 1966 at his cramped desk under the Astrodome. The navigator looks thousands of light years everywhere but down. He gets a celestial fix. Measuring headwinds, checking the log, plotting wind speed, altitude, mood drift in a circle of protractors slide rules and pencils. He charts in his how goes it?

The points of no alternate and of no return. He keeps his eyes on the compass. The two altimeters, the map he thinks. Do we have enough fuel? What if my radio fails? He’s the only Negro in the crew. The only Black Flier on the whole base, for that matter. Not that it does. This crew is a team. Bob and al less.

Smitty, Nelson. Smitty. Who said once after a poker game. I love you, Nelson. I never thought I could love a colored man. When we get out of this man’s Air Force, if you ever come down to Tuscaloosa, look me up and come to dinner. You can come in the front door to hell. You can stay overnight. Of course.

As soon as you leave, I’ll have to burn down my house. Because if I don’t, my neighbors will. The navigator knows where he is because he knows where he’s been and where he’s going at night. Since he can’t fly by dead reckoning, he calculates his position by shooting a star. The octant tells him the angle of a fixed star over the artificial horizon.

His position in that angle is absolute and true. Where the hell are we? Nelson Alley, off in the Big Dipper. Regulus. Antares in Scorpio. He plots their lines of position on the chart. Gets his radio bearing. Corrects for lost time. Bob. Al, Less and Smitty are counting on their navigator. If he sleeps, they all sleep. If he fails, they fall.

The navigator keeps watch over the night and the instruments going hungry for 5 or 6 hours to give his flight lunch to his two little girls.

Tags: Poetry