Icarus Flight
The wings came together
Wax to feathers – one by one,
Like the strands of a promise
The covenant of freedom, an escape
In which the whole world shrank
To surround us, but we were invisible
Except to our own eyes, this would become
A tsunami in an afternoon swimming pool,
Momentous in the space of one sole moment.

And then the heavy liberty,
Strapped to our shoulders, suspending
The burden of fear for something altogether
More exhilarating, thumping in our veins
A poisoned pleasure that beat like
My feet on the steps up the cliff, my heart
rang a resonating rhythm:
       running
                   running
                               running.

My foot left the cliff, when I was unaware, and –
Move your arms, he yelled, I was running up
The steps again, or so it felt, my pulse riding
Like a bird on adrenaline. A king; yes
I had become; to count the silver linings
And comb the flax of clouds. Only I
Could barter with the currency of the Sun,
Nobody else would be blessed with liquid gold.
Icarus, touch with your fingertip, or else you’ll be burned
A null-and-void warning in my head;
look what I’d earned! Shut ears, but it seemed
it kept             ringing,                                      
          ringing,             wedding bells ringing,
or was it a funeral, angels singing? Lifting,
higher I was shifting, spots dancing in and out
of the gold in my sight. Touched by the hand of God,
twisting, and still I climbed. Nooo, I heard,
Had he rejected me? Slipping, slipping, I dived
Burning out detachedly to the sound of those
unfamiliar cries, hitting a wall of cold,
wondering, had it been sand, not gold,
that trickled through my fingers,
that evaded my hold?