John Anderson | + Follow Poet |
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Descry a Skill, Decry It Not

I spied a ship and descried the flag it flew.
It was nothing like the flags I had seen before.
It was red and blue, with white circles and yellow stars
The highlights of white and yellow stood out 
    like stars at night, and town lights bright.
The red like the color of the dawn and dusk.
The blue the color of the deep blue ocean.

It was clearly the flag of a sea faring nation.
As the ship got closer, you could clearly see its details.
It was a large primitive Polynesian outrigger voyager vessel,
    a ghost ship as no one appeared to be aboard.
Where it had come from, the fate of its crew a mystery?
But the vessel sure knew how to sail
    and knew where it was headed
    as it sailed fast and free, 
    passed our sailing boat 'Snail'
    on a true heading for a spot on the horizon.

For many years the Polynesian voyagers were decried as flotsam and jetsom.
How could these primitive people navigate through the vast open ocean
    between tiny islands, pin-prick dotted in oceans of space?
It was assumed they migrated and populated the far flung oceans randomly and haphazardly
    via their fishing trips and day trips being blown off course.
But research has descried their skill and fabulous knowledge of navigation.

Each island has a gild of navigators.
They use songs and stories to memorize navigation methods:
    including the movement of the stars, wave patterns around island, 
    local currents, clouds, weather and bird behavior.
Polynesian navigators used the rise and setting of particular set stars on the horizon to set a heading.
They had wooden instruments, string and fiber maps of wave patterns and star movements to guide their way.
They skillfully know when they were near tiny islands
    from the change in the wave patterns, currents 
    and their vast knowledge of birds and wildlife.

So don't be quick to decry Polynesian navigation.
Instead, descry its beauty, simplicity, nouse, proficiency and elegance.

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