#ilovejackgilbert

The woman is not just a pleasure,

nor even a problem. She is a meniscus

that allows the absolute to have a shape,

that lets him skate however briefly

on the mystery, her presence luminous

on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor

at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets

after summer rain on maples and sycamore.

As well as the car suddenly crossing two blocks

away in a blare of light. The importance

of rocks around his Greek shepherd hut,

and mules wandering around in the empty fields.

He crosses the island in the giant sunlight,

comes back in the dark thinking of the woman.

The fact of her goes on, loved or not.

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.