When Icarus Turns Ninety, by ​Robert L. Dean, Jr.

flight, by Steven Schroeder (USA) 2017. Click image for artist site.

When Icarus Turns Ninety 
 
it’s just another day at the Y
and at first I don’t notice him
pedaling the bike machine
 
at the distant end of the row
facing the battery of big screens
ESPN, CNN, FOX, HGTV
 
keeping us grounded
in the events of this Earth
until something catches
 
the corner of my eye
—a flash of wing maybe--
and there he is, smaller
 
than I expected, shriveled,
hunched over the machine
pedaling as if he had
 
all the time in the world
no hurry, what’s the rush
the light glinting off his
 
bald pate, eyes exploring
the floor beneath him
wing-shorn, unless that
 
hump on his back
bears more than
ancient vertebrae
 
incognito, yes, wouldn’t
you be, with his backstory
all that youthful hubris
 
and Ovid reporting you
dead, your own father
buying into it, Bruegel
 
depicting your ignominious
end, feet kicking up from
the sea that would not bear
 
your name if word got out
about those Samian fishermen
and their nets, no, the follies
 
of youth are best forgot
so I can’t help but wonder
when I see him later
 
slogging his snail-paced way
through the parking lot
towards a brand new
 
sunburst yellow Corvette
if maybe there’s some hope
for me, for all of us
 
if maybe youth
is a state of grace
a frame of mind
 
if only
we just keep pedaling

​Robert L. Dean, Jr.​

This poem is from an upcoming book, The Aerialist Will not be Performing, an ekphrastic collaboration between the author and the artist.

Robert L. Dean is the author of At the Lake with Heisenberg (Spartan Press, 2018). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flint Hills Review, I-70 Review, Chiron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Shot Glass, Illya’s Honey, Red River Review, KYSO Flash, River City Poetry, Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance & Solidarity, and the Wichita Broadside Project. He is a multiple Best of the Net nominee and a Pushcart nominee for 2019. He was a quarter-finalist in the 2018 Nimrod Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. His second book, The Aerialist Will not be Performing, ekphrastic poems and short fictions to the art of Steven Schroeder, will be out in 2020. He is event coordinator for Epistrophy: An Afternoon of Poetry and Improvised Music, held annually in Wichita, Kansas. He has been a professional musician and worked at The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Augusta, Kansas.