ON A WING AND A PRAYER

Once, when in Brussels, I visited the Musee des Beaux-Arts and saw Pieter Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, a truly impressive painting by one of my favourite Old Masters.  

The Icarus story is one we can all relate to: a tale of a young man whose ambition overrode his judgement.
Which of us has not, at one time or another, aimed impossibly high and consequently been brought crashing to earth when reality shone its fearsome rays on our ludicrous aspirations.  

ICARUS

I am falling from high
but they do not notice.

The air, through wings 
that promised much,
keens like a mourner.

Creeping ants below
evolve 
to shepherd, ploughman, angler.

I fall unseen. 

Someone
will dream it later.

I have no time
to scream.

The water is 
hard as stone.