Flight of Icarus

Flight of Icarus

I knew what I was doing,

lifting over crosshatched stones,

grey and red, seams like tributaries

wondering what lived in the spaces

between those graveled stones,

twists  of light on the wind, saturated

and soft against my back, I

was a black cut-out figure

against the sky and wondered what

gnarled hand had woven this dream?

I saw the beveled labyrinth and minotaur.

The yellow scales of eagles’ feet, talons

blunted by wayward rocks.

The wax was fresh and the feathers

second hand. I’m sorry, Father.

I remember the month

I was sick as a boy, hot with fever

and you took me down to the

ocean’s rim so I could breathe again,

and we sat, trying to stop the waves.

But this day, I flew, feathered with fear,

clutching the broken compass

you had given me on my sixteenth birthday,

the antique glass cracked open,

the needle bent. North, South,

East, West, blending to one.

 

I flew towards what was warm

and what I felt was good.

The wax melted across my shoulders, my back,

Finally I had made a choice that was mine.

I fell past the cool waters into

seaweedy depths of kelp and coral.

The sun made sense.

The sea made sense.