The Icarus Of Housewives, Circa 1981 Poem by Warren Falcon

From ashtrays he rises
when birds in backyards
have been fed their seed,
a dove amid the starlings.
In smoke filled stupor we stare.

Icarus climbs our stairs,
waves his muscled arms
in doorways mimicking
the starlings in stocking feet.
He feels his way blindly
down hallways, a whirlwind
of feathers trailing behind.

And one day like any other day,
bedroom windows open,
he is gone into the sun to
make his movements golden,
to steel his flight a monument
of silver in the sky over Cleveland,
over Chicago, the Dakota plains.

And we are still reeling.

Come back.
Come back, Icarus.
Plead our case to the sun
but do not fly too close.

And it is a day like any other day
we lose him to a solar flare.
All our litigation cannot raise him up again,
our curtains closed in protest to the sun.