Melissa Studdard’s books
include the poetry collection I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast and
the novel Six Weeks to Yehidah. A short
film of the title poem from I Ate the Cosmos for was an
official selection for the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival and
the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. Other poems of hers
have been made into car magnets, telepoem booth recordings, and Houston City
Banners. Her writings have appeared in a wide range of publications, such as The
Guardian, Poets & Writers, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, and Psychology
Today. She is the executive producer and host of VIDA Voices
& Views for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, president of the
women's caucus for Associated Writing Programs, and an editor for American
Microreviews and Interviews. These
two poems, both based on the myth of Icarus, have never been paired before, as “You
Were a Bird; You Are the Sea” was collected in I Ate the Cosmos for
Breakfast, while “Stomp the Ground” was written later and appeared in Southern
Humanities Review.
Stomp the Ground
So Daedalus turned
his mind to subtle craft,
An unknown art
that seemed to outwit nature:
He placed a row of
feathers in neat orders
—Ovid
If they tell you build
it,
stomp the ground,
dancer,
stomp
the ground.
And
swirl, you,
like wine in a
gyrating glass,
while clasping Ariadne’s
hand, holding life close,
and inventing
honey
beneath
your tongue.
And if
they tell you
come
now,
trail string
through whorls of memory
to find your way out,
back in again,
and
around,
charming
ants
into choreography
behind you,
across dance floors
and over the
membranes
of time. Nautilus,
spirula,
unicursal man,
with a seashell to one ear
and the other to the ground,
listen when they
say
stay there,
and
fly, you,
dreamer, round
the tower
of mind.
And spin, you,
forever
deeper
into that device,
ignoring the feathers
that brush your windows,
and the winds
that
call you
to
distant flight.
Stay you, father,
until your son learns how to fly.
You
Were a Bird; You Are the Sea
—inspired by the
John Sokol painting, Icarus Practicing
Stretch them wide
as God’s first breath.
From tip to tip
there is no time.
Just the rumbling
of a tune
in your makeshift
beak, and bright
sky galloping
through the hollow
of bone. Bucket
of air, spine built
from light, boy
full of flutters
and drafts—you
speak mountain
stream, laurel leaf,
rolling cloud—
the dialect of flight.
The world drifts
like a madness
inside you—earth,
trees, and birds,
feathers, wings,
and night, the start
and end of time
rowing through
blood’s currents,
sailing inside
the freedom
of mind,
now split open
by a whirlwind
of koan, pushed
like air through
sky’s vast lung.
When I go,
let me go
like you, Icarus,
past my own
limits before
I fall. Let me
be a flesh-toned
streak in the sky,
a flash in the blue,
a sunburst
of wonder
rejoining
the ripples
of sea.
