Is it just another day
On the brown and crowded shore?
Does the mule in the narrow field
Hear anything odd?
Does the fisherman have a catch?
Do the sheep not startle?
Where rove the shepherd's eyes—
Towards a bird? A cloud? Your father?
Was it worth it?
Did you see the world from your winding prison walls
In this same crunched perspective—
Narrow edge by narrow edge,
And barely room for beasts or man?
Is it accident that safe and homey shores appear so small,
And skies and seas so vast?
Was it cold? Was it bracing, thrilling, energizing,
To fly among the clouds—
Crystal breaths of ice, storehouses of rain—
Where gods and birds and Pegasus may tread?
Were you drunk with joy to fly so high,
After the claustrophobic horror
Of the half-man monster's maze?
Why lies the sun so low?
They say you flew too far,
The air too hot,
Your wings clipped by Helios' flames.
Is it hubris, then, to reach for the horizon?
Written for an Ekphrasis workshop at school.