As a young girl growing up I learned a story of
a boy drowned from heavy, melting wax wings.
His father gathered feathers and tacked them together
with a warning (or a lesson) for his son:
don't stray too high, don't fall too low.
The ocean has as much power to sink you as the sun.
But the trouble with flying is that warnings
made on the ground shrink and are forgotten when
surrounded by clouds and wind and birds
and other impossibilities.
Icarus flew. He skimmed the water and
kissed the edge of dawn with his waxy feathers.
On the wings his father gave him,
he touched the corners of our atmosphere.
He nearly held the sun.
Inevitably came the fall.
The weeping wax, downing an almost angel;
the icy ocean, dragging him home.
Hubris is often accused as the siren who
called Icarus to Heaven, but his father warned
him twice: don't stray high, don't fall low.
The ocean has as much power to sink you--
The problem with Icarus wasn't that he flew too close to the sun,
but that his wings were constructed of wax and feathers.
The problem with Icarus wasn't that he flew too close to the sun,
but that he flew too near to the ground and dampened those feathers.
The problem with Icarus
was that his wet wings needed the warm closeness of the sun to dry.
The problem with Icarus
was that he never questioned if the wings his father gave him were the wings he needed.
The problem with Icarus
is that we remember the lesson he died for wrong.
The problem with Icarus
is our own fear of flying.
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