Feathers collected,
golden, revered,
lay as still and as delicate
as a piper’s fingertips
suspended—
just before song.
They started in color, russet and ruby,
but his skilled hands render them gilded
with steady courage.
They gleam, effortlessly,
mirroring the amber sunlight
that pools in the lazy morning,
settling thickly
through the open window.
A father kneels, hunched over.
He tinkers at the mass of feathers,
each one borrowed from patience;
years of offerings
to scornful gods and faithless creatures.
He deftly tethers them
onto a spider-silk strand of hope.
The wing-smith wipes his brow,
sweating in the sour summer air.
The motion would normally be swift
were his arms not heavy,
weighed down with resolve
as the hours passed,
and passed.
He can feel his son watching,
waiting for the clouds to part
or rain to begin weeping.
Icarus, impatience,
forever swallowing the sky
in hopes of tasting the dramatic.
Hot-headed, but quick like his father.
The father smiles,
delight cooling his tongue.
Patience.
He would see his son away
from this
godforsaken tower,
bathed in sunlight and
free as the birds that lent their feathers
for this fantastic imitation.
The clouds were pure and blinding white,
as if they had gorged themselves on snow,
even as the summer sky
smelled sweet and rich with dew.
The day had come.
The sun was poppy-red and marigold,
filled with promise,
And as the hazy air began to settle,
A man rose,
for the day had come.
Icarus knelt as his father
twined the feathers to him,
the divine flight feather-light.
And so the day began!
As the petals of the sun begin to fall,
the first tentative wings open, close, open.
The dizzy, cloying scent of flight
and hunger, an endless garden
is cut
only by a simple warning:
the wings are fragile,
for when the blazing the sun
is close enough
to extend a molten hand,
it will grasp your wings and melt
their steady seal.
I understand, father.
Go on, then.
He watched as his son flew,
his heart tied along with him,
higher and higher still.
Icarus, with sheer joy shining on his brow,
tasting the sun-warmed air of freedom
for the first time.
Open, close, open,
the quick rhythm pulling him above
the deserted clouds.
He rose, reborn,
too high.
A pair of spiritless wings
pulled
desperately
towards the crashing sea.
Icarus, scorned by the sun.
The waves cradled him gently at first,
but as suddenly as the wings fell,
Icarus lay no longer aching,
spat out onto the pale sand.
And as his father rose
from grief
to kneel at his side,
the sun stumbled down,
foreign again,
as it dipped into the water.
The fresh coffee-sky poured out,
the stars and gaze of gods
spattered like blood.
