I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I've always loved myths, legends, fables, and fairy tales.

When I was young, the myth of Icarus was one that captured my imagination.

As the story goes, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a master craftsman in ancient Greece.

When Daedalus was punished by the king of the time, he and his son were imprisoned in a tall tower.

Like most children confined to a small space, Icarus quickly became restless, and Daedalus, craftsman that he was, devised a plan to escape.

He made two sets of wings from feathers glued together with wax.

He warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun,

which would cause the wax to melt. He also warned him not to fly too low, which would cause the

feathers to get wet with seawater. Together, Daedalus and Icarus escaped the tower.

Icarus, however, flew higher and higher.

The wax melted, and he fell into the sea and drowned.

Today's poem references this myth, this cautionary tale, in beautiful, unexpected ways.

It explores not only the tragic ending of the myth, but also what it tells us about our

human desire for freedom.

If Night You Were a City by Adam Whiteowich.

I would return to you in a jacket of gold leaves, drawn tight against the city wind, whipping around corners through

buttonholes over cobbled streets, park lanes, cordoned off barbarian herds of steel

and glass and concrete, ground zero for crowds of absence.

We'd lift off beyond the brick toward choked stars, moons outshined by neon and by anxious day, moons perched on dark spires, golden lions,

we'd wrap our naive wings around to embrace the artifice of it all and the reality.

The heat here is unbearable,

...