Icarus Descending

I ride my bicycle to work, leaving earlier than usual
so I can go slow. Everything looks normal,
the air is fresh, the copper
beech trees and the ginkgoes
lush in their end-of-summer foliage,
the street clean from last night's rain.
The men from Public Works
have been here lately and patched a few holes.
Somebody must have complained,
but it wasn't me. The only blemish
on my contentment is the strange sensation
that somebody very like me is falling through the air
right now, close behind me,
from a great height falling — having leapt, or been pushed —
but anyhow no longer cradling his despair,
making light of it, arms outstretched,
though his corduroy sleeves cannot undulate
like feathered wings in figure eights
and he is dropping. How foolish to try
to see him. I don't even twist to look,
the way a dream just after you have woken
has no words for you.

Carol Edelstein
The Disappearing Letters
Perugia Press

Copyright © 2005 by Carol Edelstein.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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