It’s madness this falling in love with sadness,
that faint sound a song that keeps resurfacing
between thoughts that Icarus carried too far
seen from the river’s edge painting by Brueghel
She’s able to swim with help from a large dog
(over and beyond tale of the falling youth)
I envy the comfort that she takes from him
(falling brusquely into a dream) bathed in a
sunlit world where the shadows are deepest and
when at my desk voluntarily holding myself to writing
“it” the absent, the falling, the dangerous
just balances at the edge of the tale, of
dangerous dropping places where “knights” “ladies”
plummet and cannot recover from madness—
