remember to remember
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
http://youtu.be/_xU5ZQJd9ec
We are often surprised when love falls apart. It makes no sense to us—how can something so beautiful turn so ugly? But we should not be so surprised, because few of us are ready to hold love safe. Few of us are trained in the art of love. The entire world has been organized around masks and defenses. Adaptation and disguise are our specialty. But love is a different world—an unmasked, surrendered landscape that few of us have explored with any great depth. It’s easy for most of us to articulate concepts, but to hearticulate feelings is another planet altogether. We are only at the beginning of an enheartened way. We haven’t
downloaded the ways of the heart. We are learning as we crawl. Best we stop beating ourselves up when it doesn’t work out. There is so much left to learn.
💓
– Jeff Brown
excerpt from Spiritual Graffiti
photo sourcs found at http://www.pinterest.com
life: acoustic & amplified 