High Flier

by Gene Grabiner

Brueghel’s “The Fall of Icarus”

It’s not that the plowman
or the shepherd
or the angler are
unaware of the splash,
of the legs going under.
In Brueghel, his plunge into the sea
seems incidental.
The plowman continues his furrows,
working downhill through the
deep foreshortened distance.
Resting on his staff
the shepherd stares skyward with
his back to the bay.
Still fishing,
with bait bucket or beer nearby,
the angler
is not startled
by the oddity
of this splash.
The wind is up in the bay,
sailors hard at work make ready.
We think that those on the galleon
have seen the emergency. Yet
no rescue boats put out.
The myth of the drowning has become
the drowning of the myth: a
splash into a silent sea.