Who questions the story? The strange-god-man beast? His labyrinthine abode? His carnivorous diet? The architect of his incarceration? The boy prisoner?

The last flight

His wax and feathers and flapping ersatz wings

We all know this is not going to fly

But we proceed nonetheless

Watch them go in your mind, at least, father and son soar in the cloudless

sky where

All literary imagination and polytheistic scaffolding cannot stop the

Firmament from becoming thin and cold a million miles from the sun

Not hot at all, wings useless but intact

The boy would have died eventually, no doubt, but not from any hubristic ascent

No rather, the same things that tie us all to the ground

Aged and infirm

Dragging his beautiful, insufficient wings across the sandy beach