In those first moments of open air, blue
and clear, like the stomach of a mountain
lake, when he could still taste the dawn,

he couldn’t help but look down. He knew
the risk. First rule of flight: Do not look
behind you, lest you be swept away. But

of course there was life he left behind;
secret seaglass stashes, his father’s
birdbone chandelier—of course

no break is a clean one. From the air,
he let the rocky shoreline shrink, watched
his dangling barefeet grow. Lot’s wife

must have been shocked, too, to see
how far she’d come, how quickly lives
become memory. He knew he hadn’t

been chased out, that Knossos wasn’t
boiling in sulfur—still, he felt like something
was burning, some world behind him reducing

to ash. Even up high, where trees, palaces,
become just shapes, the sea-spray started,
soft, to coat his wings, his skin, with salt.