Icarus Pinioned (For His Own Good)

A bone-jarring, marrow-tingling "poing...poing..." 
pounds the asphalt like a slow, steady jackhammer, 

like a drunken woodpecker,

like an insistent finger poking your sternum.

In the middle of the intersection, a grown man

is bouncing on a pogo stick. 

He's a broad-shouldered brute, at least six feet tall, 

his bare paunch flopping over the front 
of his zig-zag sweat pants.
He seems to be trying to either drill a hole through the planet
or to leave it behind.

He leaps out of the way of the cars 

that careen around the corners.

His tiny daughter watches silently from the sidewalk.

I have never felt so heavy and rooted as I do 
sitting here on the porch, my foot propped in its 

Velcro-strapped blue boot, my crutches leaning beside me 
like the crippled cousins of that single springing pole. 

Just crossing the room is like sculling on sand,

my shoulders aching oarlocks.

I would love to fit each of these plucked wings

with springs, so that I too 

could bound through the neighborhood,

leaping over trucks, ducking my head 

so as not to brush the power lines.

Although to be honest, I’d settle 

for being able to place both feet flat on the ground 
so I could waddle over there and knock 
that ricocheting Icarus off his 

obnoxious bouncing perch,

remind him what the earth tastes like.