First Flight, by Jeffrey Howard

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlands) c. 1558

First Flight

Tiny feet crunch across the boardwalk slats connecting beach and beach house, past four-cornered signs demarcating with screamed warnings the edges of the protected Topsail dunes, their sparse vegetation rooted shallow. Keep off.Fragile. His three-year-old belly presses the stretch of his navy swim shirt, the powerful one o’clock sun radiating off his shoulders like wings. The black metal latch on the back gate proves an easy bypass. 

And the father, where is he? On the third floor, treating the salt rash on my chest and putting my infant son down for the afternoon, away from waves, incessant breeze, white sand. Others are making sandwiches, looking for frosty sodas before they return like loggerheads to the ocean. Watching the little ones is the implicit duty of all.

At first, he does not intend to enter the swimming pool. He never intends. Like the Comet he dumped in his own bath water because he thought it was bubbles. Or the gash he will open above his eyebrow while roughhousing too near a piano bench at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. 

What compels a boy to attempt strange waters alone? The challenge of retrieving the yellow and red diving rings from the shallow end. A rogue neuron marionetting both legs and gaze. Particles of quartzite and coquina on his wet ankles cling stubborn in his descent. 

Last year my wife’s cousin caught him dangling from a second-story balcony while we vacationed at Bear Lake. At first he had tried to stand on one of the slack metal cables, but slipped through. He had only wanted to see better. The grasses near the lake shore, turquoise waters, aspens and junipers dotting the yellow hills.

Blond shock baptized, his legs are not strong enough to propel him to the wall. He bobs once, then again. His brother shrieks, “He’s stuck! He’s stuck!”

Physics dictates that anyone can reach the bottom. To keep one’s head above the surface is a true gift. 

I lay the muslin blanket on my sleeping lamb and watch him breathe before closing the door. 

From nowhere an uncle’s strong arms encircle and lift, aglint and featherlight, a boy learning finally to fly.

Jeffrey Howard

Jeffrey Howard teaches writing and multimodal composition at Converse University and directs the university's writing center. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in literary magazines such as Arcturus, Wordgathering, and Glass Mountain. A former literary magazine editor, Jeffrey lives with his family in Spartanburg, South Carolina.