Failing and flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

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

That he 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 him,

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

Every morning he was asleep in my bed
like a visitation.
Each afternoon I watched him coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind him and the huge sky
on the other side of that.

Listened to him
while we ate lunch.

How can they say
the marriage, relationship, romance 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.