<b>Failing and Flying"<br /><br />Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.<br />It's the same when love comes to an end,<br />or the marriage fails and people say<br />they knew it was a mistake, that everybody<br />said it would never work. That she was <br />old enough to know better. But anything<br />worth doing is worth doing badly.<br />Like being there by that summer ocean<br />on the other side of the island while<br />love was fading out of her, the stars <br />burning so extravagantly those nights that<br />anyone could tell you they would never last.<br />Every morning she was asleep in my bed<br />like a visitation, the gentleness in her<br />like antelope standing in the dawn mist.<br />Each afternoon I watched her coming back<br />through the hot stony field after swimming,<br />the sea light behind her and the huge sky<br />on the other side of that. Listened to her<br />while we ate lunch. How can they say <br />the marriage failed? Like the people who<br />came back from Provence (when it was Provence)<br />and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.<br />I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,<br />but just coming to the end of his triumph.</b>