Icarus

isn’t sorry. We do not find him
doing penance, writing out the golden mean for all
eternity, or touring its high schools to tell student bodies
not to do what he done
done. Over and over he rehearses flight
and fall, tuning his moves, entering
with fresh rush into the mingling of the air with spirit. This is his practice
and his prayer: to be translated into air, as air
with each breath enters lungs,
then blood. He feels resistance gather in his stiff
strange wings, angles his arms to shuck the sweet lift
from the drag, runs the full length
of a nameless corridor, his feet striking the paving stones
less and less heavily, then
they’re bicycling above the ground,
a few shallow beats and he’s up,
he’s out of the story and into the song.

At the melting point of wax which now he knows
the way Doug Harvey knows the blue line,
he will back-beat to create a pause, hover for maybe fifty
hummingbird heartbeats and then
lose it, tumbling into freefall, shedding feathers
like a lover shedding clothes. He may glide in the long arc of a Tundra Swan or pull up sharp to Kingfisher into the sea which bears his name. Then,
giving it the full Ophelia, drown.

On the shore
the farmer ploughs his field, the dull ship
sails away, the poets moralise about our
insignificance. But Icarus is thinking tremolo and
backflip, is thinking
next time with a half-twist
and a tuck and isn’t
sorry.