after Auden's Musée des Beaux Arts
Three hours into a four-hour meeting I see it -
shrunken, bird-like, flying around the room
swooping in and out of PowerPoints
pausing near Vincent's Sunflowers
hovering above the presenter just in from Secaucus.
He should have listened to his father.
He should have stuck to the flight plan.
Two counties over, a farmer milks cows
in a frigid barn, puffs of breath linger.
A fisherman drills a hole through the ice.
The fish have been watching him for years.
They too know the sting of the barb
the punishing yank into sunlight
the gasping amidst the cruelty of words.
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| Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Peter Bruegel |