“a splash quite unnoticed”
– Robert Creeley, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

I glide through the velvet sky on Icarus wings,
never to touch the sun, to err once more,
but feel the brush of regaling winds
that push me forward and nothing more.

I leave an island of cold labyrinths behind me.
It has been wrought to ruins by some skyborn hand.
It is useless to try to return it to its glory
for rivers are rivers and land is land.

My only guide is the morning haze
to mark how much further up or further down
I need to be between the kiss of waves
and the rosy fingertips of the dawn.

If only a bird can know the world from overhead
then I must be this unfettered creature
for men were not made to tread the clouds;
they were only meant to dream and to desire.

My Elesion home lies faraway
beyond the bow and bear of stars.
I’ll disappear somewhere along the way
like a stone tossed and lost under Aegean water.

September 1, 2003