Journey Poetry Competition

No maps for Icarus: no lodestone or sextant;
no craft to cut the water and speed him home
along known routes, with the crack and snap
of a following wind in its sails;
but only untried wings old Daedalus has made
and strapped to his arms with a warning:
choose always the middle way between sea and sky:
above the drenching spray; below the scorch of the sun
that will melt the wax binding your feathered wings.

But when was it ever a young man’s style
to harness himself to caution, shackle himself
to prudence, calculate odds, tread warily?
Weightless, he soars, young blood singing
in his veins, and the gilded face overhead
lures and beguiles him like a lover.

Imagine old Daedalus, mourning bedraggled quills
on shifting waves, cursing the mouthless sea that
swallowed his headstrong boy.

But afterwards, maybe, when tears were spent
and his eyes were rusted and dried, he would stroke
the scar of memory ridged across his heart
(as old men must, remembering
their own long, careful lives, and lost sons
who flung themselves further, higher,
above, beyond). And Daedalus catches his breath
at the sweet, envious pang still throbbing there for him:
Icarus, a soaring spear of light,
burnished with disobedience,
who steered his own high way
to grasp for heaven.

Shortlisted
The following poems were shortlisted: The Romantic Road, Anne Allinson, Christchurch, Dorset; Hopes and Fears, A David Brown, Bermatingen, Germany; The Trolley Now Departing, Anna Caddy, Thurloxton, Taunton; Journeys, Stephanie Cage, Slough; Memory of Sikharji, Elizabeth Izzard, Leicester; Maps, Simon Gunter, Rugby; The River, William Jarvis, Troon; Flight Pattern, Wendy Klein, Pangbourne, Berkshire; Journey, Kaye Lee, Muswell Hill, London; The School Run, Jackie Mitchell, Laleham, Middlesex; Catching the Cornish Riviera Express, Diane Simkin, Camborne, and Journey, Brian John Webb, Armthorpe, Doncaster.