It's almost inconceivable that there was some debate about whether we had really heard the angels singing it wasn't that there wasn't birdsong on the breeze the embarrassment of dew on the wings of two juvenile cardinals perhaps only just nudged from their nest and fanning as much to learn to fly as to shake off the lethargy of making that uncertain transit from the comfortable shelter of their eggs to open mouthed hatchlings you see these little ones were the most unlikely daredevils dancing without a net upon the wire while the birds fluttered and hovered like jump jets over the deck of an aircraft carrier itself unsteady on the waves I was thinking about the ubiquitousness of bread certain that the last supper was also the first eucharist and it's not a stretch to imagine more than the cardinals doing what they do in memory of some forgotten flight that turned feathers inexplicably from russet to red just because red was...

What if Daedalus was not the daredevil we imagine?  Sure, he was puffed up with cocksure hubris and overweening pride.  Not to deny somewhere in his intention he was stunting or reckless or flying at speeds.  Naturally, for his fatal conceit, the heat of the sun melted the wax on his wings.  Perhaps some invisible solar storm even singed his eyelashes and fringe, like an infernal Chicago tenement gas oven, carbonizing what was left of his angel hair to the point of ash.  Likely, by understandable instinct, he smudged his forehead and cheek with the facts he burned.  Certainly, he pitied himself as he wiped the sweat from his brow and wrung the tears from his eyes by squeezing them tight.  After all, pride must suffer pain, so WASPish mothers tell us at Sunday School.  But was he really so bad, or was there a light hidden under bushels of flaxen feathers?  Was he just being a good father, or mother maybe, holding his beloved tight to his bosom...