I, Icarus

There was a time when I could fly. I swear it.
Perhaps, If I think hard enough for a moment, I can even tell you the year.
My room was on the ground floor at the rear of the house.
My bed faced a window.
Night after night I lay on my bed and willed myself to fly.
It was hard work, I call tell you.
Sometimes I lay perfectly still for an hour before I felt
my body rising from the bed.
I rose slowly, slowly until I floated three or four feet
above the floor.
Then, with a kind of swimming motion, I propelled myself
toward the window.
Outside, I rose higher and higher, above the pasture fence,
above the clothesline, above the dark, haunted trees
beyond the pasture.
And, all the time, I heard the music of flutes.
It seemed the wind made this music.
And sometimes there were voices singing.

-Alden Nowlan