Ein Heldenleben

Ein Heldenleben

The element was sacrifice,
the set aside of commerce; what remains
is just that browned reminder of a yesterday,
the crowded theatre of retrospection
one could not let go.

What remains are all the questions...
Hopes were high, now there is none...
only the present, eking out existence,
just a crumb of joy to keep him going—
yet those questions are his magic:
that shade of dawn behind the crescent moon
that asks...expects no answer,
basks in adulation for a breath or two,
and then would readily exchange it
for a death entirely his own.

And so the final days
of lost celebrity
are worn away within
the West Virginia hills,
shouting at the thunderclouds
to make their peace and co-create with him
a requiem for vanity,
a mountain echo for the voices
singing in his heart; his heroism
rests within that place
and there it celebrates not pride
or strife, but profound mystery,
agent provocateur in everyman
and every solitary life.
~