ICARUS UNBOUND

fetched in a screech
of downhill sky
Icarus, pitching
met the wind

coming at him
through unwaxed straps
learned
the wrong way up, to fly

Icarus: untied

out of upswept
plaster I built him
leaping with unpared wires
his ragged armature

cradled a hollowness
at core, yet undeterred
the sculpture warred with air

Icarus: flawed

the plaster figure
and the real man
drove themselves through me
all one rain-long Spring
until a creature clumsily conformed
spilt upside down

Icarus: unwarned
           
then came curious weeks
I left him standing
precarious
on the shed roof - every wind
promised a landing

yet, great white bat
he remained
shaking out scarred wings
tremulously restrained
bits fell off
perhaps to reconnoitre

Icarus: the loiterer

a late April storm
flashy and rowdy
took him
lightning-struck
who had yearned for light

now broken-backed
undone
his blind face
terrible with the knowledge
of the ground
its last embrace

Icarus: unbound

THIS EXTINCTION BUSINESS

in 1988 they said - there's a hole in the sky!
we're all going to die!
but by then we were hardened to
warnings: we'd grown a carapace.
for years we'd been going to die
at any moment: blown sky-high.  so what?

and now the planet's broken?
sure.  we've done our worst,
we deserve to reap the whirlwind.
but it's those others i hear:
their hooves thudding into extinction.
furred and scaled and feathered, winged and finned:
accusing us: we're as sentient as you!
this is our world, too!

but if i say - we're taking the others with us!
we deserve to die but they don't!
you ask - which others?  and look at me
as if this extinction business
has tipped me over the edge.

no; i am as sane as cold water.
when we have killed ourselves and all the others,
the hot poisoned wind will bear away
the guilt we cannot bear to own,
and our name will be a hissing on that wind.