DEATH Poem: Daedalus Watches, by Maria Cina

(for my father’s son, Vova Chechotkin, 33)

Father told him.
not too high,
not too low,
As he gifted the waxed wings
and released him from his cage.
As if the world ever listened
to a father’s fear.

He wore thirty-three on his back,

And he ran like he was racing the sun with his baseball bat.

Strange,

How the number stayed with him,

right to the end.

He laughed like nothing could touch him,
a sound brighter than the sky.
He didn’t look back.
Not once.

I saw as Father tried to steady him,
guiding, following, warning.
But he found his wind,
(a wind that would carry ghosts)
and made it his own.

Father watched.
He always watched.
Through the storms,
the silence,
The slow climb back
into the bright light.

And when he finally flew,
free, clear,
No ghosts clinging to his heels.
The world reached for him,
and took him too fast.

Soon enough,
He fell from the great height.

They still say
He had so much ahead,
But Father saw
How far he came.

That flight?
That was everything.

And sometimes,
When the sky is too dark
And the world feels too quiet,
Father speaks out to the moon.

“Careful, son.
For the danger of fun
can quickly turn into memory,
of the boy
who flew too close to the sun.”