What Icarus Didn’t Say

by Allison Lee

Steer away from the water

Stay away from the heat

Icarus heard his father’s voice

As the pair escaped from Crete


The boy glided in the air

Gaze affixed on the golden

What once seemed impossible

Was now so close, so sudden


And so the wings they beat

They carried him through levels

Daedalus’s advice he did not heed

And flew toward the devil


He made so close, too close

Nearer than one’s ever been

But success is never eternal

So his feathers were lost to wind


As he was hurling toward the ocean

His arms outstretched to the glow

A thought was planted in his mind

A thought he never told


“Toward the sun I flew

High and free of pain

Consequences which I knew

But how many have done the same?”