Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by PH Coleman

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlands) c. 1560

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus              
                                              
he obeyed his father
practicing in rich air
of birds and the bees
skating over azure blue 
 
until

                       water wet his feathers
 
in fear and exultation
he soared up into day
to a pointless ending
eaten by a hungry sun
 
our

                    dominion of just gods
 
a plowman and a fisher
tending field and ocean 
saw nothing of that fall
a shepherd heard a cry
 
only

                    a partridge in the bush
 
the youth melted to sea
in bits of wax and wings
gone and never noticed
the sheep need minding
 
earth

                    feeds one thing to another

PH Coleman

PH Coleman came to writing after years of teaching chemistry in university and high school because, of course, poems are a molecular art. His work has been published in The Mountain Troubadour (VT), Eunoia Review, Trouvaille Review, Neologism Review, and in six ekphrastic exhibits in Columbia and Kansas City, Missouri.