Icarus Poem by Jose F Rosado

Remember when I flew?
Sill-wet-wings wide against the sky,
Riding my own thermals,
Born of the heat of passion
And the winds of expectation.

Rising on hope and ambition
Through the pull of limitations,
I flew to a world of light,
Carpeted by clouds.
Pierced by minarets
Of endless possibilities.

Remember when I flew?
I was a god then.
Rising toward certain destiny
Free of rules and laws.
Free of somber gravity.

I flew because I could.
I had become a god-bird;
A hawk in locked-winged break
From my past, my self,
My species.

Remember when I flew
And I thought that flight
Would last forever?
How the sun called down to me
To reveal the secrets of the light?

Even as my wings would soften
And I heard my father’s warnings
Coming softly from behind,
I knew that soaring called me;
That my life depended on it;
That in this risky flight to heaven
Lay the answers of the light.

Remember when I flew
And came face to face with God?
The confusion and the fear,
The certainty and the joy,
The friction of all opposites
Searing, burning in bright light.

Shedding ambitions like feathers
Dropping from my wings… I fell,
Pulled by the glow of gravity
To the sea where fusion waits.
And I passed beside my father,
Flying cautious circles in the sky,
Calling to him imbued
With the joy of understanding:
'Don’t ever forget me father…
And remember when I flew! '

(December 2004)