[A Sequel to Chris Sorrenti’s “Icarus Reborn”]


Oh, you almost reached
the very mists of heaven,
skimmed above thick carpets of clouds
into rare unspoiled blue,

the sun beating hammers of heat
on your back, boiling the blood
and snapping synapses
till the brain cannot feel

the blistering, the melting of wax,
the fraying of feather,
cascading like an ominous snow.
Your blissful altitude spins out

and you stall in the stratosphere,
all the lift gone. Bernoulli fails you,
as you plummet through all the stages of air,
unnatural appendages ripping up and flayed,

as you flap insanely with human arms,
arms that took you up, prepared,
but now just naked, skinned,
flailing your desperate demise

as you hit the water, efficiently,
with hardly a sound in the larger world,
as Brueghel and Auden observed.
And the only ones who notice

are those who knew you
and forgot to look the other way.

03/19/2002

Author's Note: [First published in Feel the Word, March 2008.]

Posted on 03/19/2002
Copyright © 2025 Bruce W Niedt