A Poem for People in Long-term Recovery

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work.

That she was old enough to know better.

But anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that.

Listened to her while we ate lunch.

How can they say the marriage failed?

Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

"Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 .