Category: Marlene Vine

masses: icarus

icarus flying
away from the labyrinth
into the green west

now I lay me down
on tattering texts tearing
along ancient folds

enamored odin
makes a castle with a wall
and a moat of fire

cutting off escape
or the breath—it’s the same thing
throat closes, heart breaks

the painting tells it
slant, darkness bleeding out from
under and soaking

songs of birds fall on
and erode the silent dream
of a rock on which

standing in the rain
looking through a glass darkly
the screen of knowing

the mottled browns of
a bird sitting on a line
before it flies off

the organismic
fire, the womb of all, nothing
becoming something

bereft, one wanders
off the path, one arrives here
where the blue earth breathes