Leonardo’s Map

Ideas blaze
from your cartographer’s breath
and reach out
in drawings,diagrams
of undiscovered worlds
as complex for any artistic scientist
in sculpture, art when even
a night bird’s anatomy
discloses for us mysteries
once hidden in the shadows.

Once in the Middle Ages
our eyes were lowered
to superstition and inquisition
unopened to explore flashing discoveries
in acoustics and echoes.

Yet you, Leonardo, a visionary
of human flight with your balloons
probe what every generation now accepts
in latitudes of reason,
with a mind for exploration
for air pilots and astronauts
rocketed as on gesturing wings
into the cosmos!