Icarus Breathing

Indestructible seabirds, black and white, leading and following;

semivisible mist, undulating, worming about the head;

rain starring the sea, tearing all over me;

our little boat, as in a Hokusai print, nudging closer

to Icarus (a humpback whale, not a foolish dead boy)

heaving against rough water; a voluminous inward grinding—

like a self breathing, but not a self—revivifying,

oxygenating the blood, making the blowhole move,

like a mouth silent against the decrees of fate: joy, grief,

desperation, triumph. Only God can obstruct them.

A big wave makes my feet slither. I feel like a baby,

bodiless and strange: a man is nothing if he is not changing.

Father, is that you breathing? Forgiveness is anathema to me.

I apologize. Knock me to the floor. Take me with you.