Southern Icarus

Southern Icarus by Michael R. Burch Windborne, lover of heights, unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace you climb, skittish kite ... What do you know of the world’s despair, gliding in vast solitariness there so that all that remains is to fall? Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs; you stall spread-eagled as the canvas snaps and flaps its white rebellious wings, and all the houses watch with baffled eyes. Originally published by Poetry Porch. Keywords/Tags: Icarus, flight, flying, adventure, America, angel, courage, sun, hang-gliding, kite, glider, wind, canvas, South, southern, truck, unspooled Note: The following poem unites Icarus with Tom O'Bedlam in a final, magical quest ... Finally to Burn (the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus) by Michael R. Burch I. Athena takes me sometimes by the hand and we go levitating through strange Dreamlands where Apollo sleeps in his dark forgetting and Passion seems like a wise bloodletting and all I remember —upon awaking— is: to Love sometimes is like forsaking one’s Being—to glide heroically beyond thought, forsaking the here for the There and the Not. II. O, finally to Burn, gravity beyond escaping! To plummet is Bliss when the blisters breaking rain down red scabs on the earth’s mudpuddle... Feathers and wax and the watchers huddle... Flocculent sheep, O, and innocent lambs! I will rock me to sleep on the waves’ iambs. III. To Sleep, that is Bliss in Love’s recursive Dream, for the Night has Wings pallid as moonbeams— they will flit me to Life, like a huge-eyed Phoenix fluttering off to quarry the Sphinx. IV. Riddlemethis, riddlemethat, Rynosseross, throw out the Welcome Mat. Quixotic, I seek Love amid the tarnished rusted-out steel when to live is varnish. To Dream—that’s the thing! Aye, that Genie I’ll rub, soak by the candle, aflame in the tub. V. Riddlemethis, riddlemethat, Rynosseross, throw out the Welcome Mat. Somewhither, somewhither aglitter and strange, we must moult off all knowledge or perish caged. VI. I am reconciled to Life somewhere beyond thought— I’ll Live in the There, I’ll Dream of the Naught. Methinks it no journey; to tarry’s a waste, so fatten the oxen; make a nice baste. I’m coming, Fool Tom, we have Somewhere to Go, though we injure noone, ourselves wildaglow.