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.

— Jack Gilbert

via among the pines

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

Douglas Adams

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-John Gillespie Magee, Jr