I.
I used to think that a person kicking
his heels to air was dancing, taut with the
sane useless beauty of any muscle
turned in rebellion of thought (mindless laugh).
Tonight, chemical-thralled, I realized:
the moment of action is small defense
against impossibility, sharp-toothed
in the magnifying glass, equal to
the discus throw, Mesopotamian
metal, sloughing of muscles to air, in
a thrust at God (choice: Jehovah or Zeus.)
II.
At his angel-death-flight, Icarus drew
near sun in hormoned frenzy. The licking
heat and the wax felt like wet palms, vaccumed
crevices, skin to skin, an ecstacy
ended in a drop-slap, cold as his father,
cold in face. He met eyes with Daedalus,
began to widen pupils in remaining
breaths. In fall: the boy anachronismed,
precursored, guessed in sweet, ice-gasping air
the Fibonacci sequence: for two reasons:
one: he fell toward ocean over the spot
where the chubbed math-man's mother would welcome
the captain of her medieval schooner
in the white Aegean, bright and shining,
a day liminal of plague pollution
before returning to Pisa, to set
her son against stones, he to abandon
the classic counting of the falling men,
(the boy's sewn wings dropping, I, double I)
and to claim the math of the moors, painting
nature-numbers, golden means in petals.
(III.
Could any suggest a definition?
Flying has happened when: anything has
changed, any body, any spouting truth
of knowledge to earth, matter severed,
joined, introduced, togethered, face to faced,
identitied. Surprise for the war gods.)