Icarus Risen

Breughel was not a cynic. Anyone can see the man painted inclusively. Everyone, everything counted. Today. What we can say is that the painter stayed true to the timeless myth as he knew it, ala Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid too, stays the course, doesn't stray from the essential story. For that matter, centuries and centuries later, Auden and Williams make the same decision. They work with what's been given.

I have heard people, students in particular, wonder if Icarus swam to shore and spent a life avoiding crazy inventors like his father. He grew a beard, they say, and dropped out for a few years. Maybe he experienced sexual enlightenment with the farmer's daughter. Did he learn how to butcher lamb under the careful watch of the shepherd? These men, and few others, really understood forgiveness, patience and the power of staying. They knew Icarus——he went by the name Sky, kind of trendy in those days after the fall——they knew he would keep moving. But for now, they were happy to be his anchor, make sure he got fed. They nurtured him like they would any creature or plant, silently acknowledging his rate of growth, his nightmares, his fear of heights and water. They encouraged him to find his own way in the world, a world with different sorts of risks, the kind you read about in the paper or watch on the six o'clock news.

They never took it personally, either, when they came across his crazy journal entries, his sketches, his plans for escape.

Somewhere out there was Daedalus. Nobody talks about that.