Via Academy of American Poets, “Failing and Flying” by Jack Gilbert:
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.
This poem makes me think of handstands.
Handstand has been a semi-regular part of my practice for maybe four or five years now. I used a wall then, and I use a wall now.
Except for that one time I thought it would be awesome to try it in the middle of the room, then accidentally flipped over onto the couch. But that is the exception that proves the rule. It is also the start of the rule that goes, “If you must do your inversions in the middle of the room, then face the couch and not the TV. You known why.“
But that is neither here nor there.
On point, in the four or five years I’ve been practicing handstands, I haven’t gotten much better. I mean, I can kick up reliably, and with the wall I can stay there. But without the wall, well, my sense of balance is fleeting. A second or two away from the wall was all I could do four years ago; a second or two away from the wall is all I can do now.
One might say I have failed at handstands. I have not made visible progress in the pose in years and, barring some belated Festivus miracle, I am unlikely to make visible progress in the foreseeable future.
And yet.
Those one or two seconds, when I can get them, that I’m actually balancing on my own hands, holding myself vertical (more or less) in the air? Irreplaceable. I am flying.
