ON IKAROS
for Tammy
Child of a jealous,
Brilliant, arrogant,
Murderous parent,
The Leonardo of
Athens and Krete,
The inventor of
Everything important
Anywhere, ever, imprisoned
With that famous
Father atop a tower,
Atop the Minoan
Civilization that
Same exiled dad
Had built with
A wile and guile
Greater than crafty
Odysseos would ever
Muster; his flawed
Parent made wings
Of ordinary things:
Bird feathers, bees’s
Wax, ingenuity,
Desperation, freedom,
Yearning, love;
And so they flew
Away into a kind
Of an expectation,
But the child was headstrong,
Like his parent, and
Exhilarated by flight,
As though he were a
God, flew higher and
Higher, until you could
No longer hear his
Father‘s horrified
Cries to stop. Great Helios,
In his fiery chariot,
Looked down in
Disappointment, as
Waxen wings melted
Under the heat
Of his blazing gaze,
And Ikaros plummeted
To splash into the
Wine dark Aegean,
As Bruegel foretold.
But the child was headstrong,
Like his parent, and
Exhilarated by flight,
As though he were a
God, flew higher and
Higher, until you could
No longer hear his
Father‘s horrified
Cries to stop. Great Helios,
In his fiery chariot,
Looked down in
Disappointment, as
Waxen wings melted
Under the heat
Of his blazing gaze,
And Ikaros plummeted
To splash into the
Wine dark Aegean,
As Bruegel foretold.
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