Icarus

(ll. 19-21) Hail, sweetly-winning, coy-eyed goddess! Grant that I may gain the victory in this contest, and order you my song.

            - Homer

Icarus

Oh my love,

I awoke this morning without you

to the barking of dogs

and another sound.

Thick from a thin sleep

my arms and soul were tired

from clenching and grasping

at your absence in the night. 

You are Aphrodite

beautiful beyond reason, drawing and seeking all

helping or punishing with gifts of love and the flesh.

And you are Athena

goddess of war, a breast plate of armor, protector of cities

Protector of herself.

defiant from duty, born of her father’s skull.

Two women of you in battle over the loom.

There are days when I have been

an Icarus, so seduced by the power of flight

your love

so as to ignore the warnings of all my fathers.

Plunging from the heat of your sun

the spinning of a dying thing into the sea

hurt from actions intended

to escape the labyrinth, but temptations

now wished unremembered in the waters below.

My heart, my queen. 

The other sound this morning was the soft lapping of the foam-laden shores of your creation.

It was the sound of your love, your power

a chariot of swans, but a field of anemones

and the sound of my heart, my own feathers

now floating through the waves around me. 

            -           December 15, 2005

©2005 J. Popowich