Heroes

From infant’s hopes,

Sliding from our shoulders,

We birth in perpetual labour

Our heroes,

Larger than life

Painfully divine in their aloofness.

Far from everything we are

And ever will be.

Our jealous craze

Rips them apart, our creatures,

Crushes them to patina

To coat our obsession

That craves for the messiah

But cannot suffer him.

I wrote this a while ago (and if all goes well, it will be published next year), but it never occurred to me that I might find it fitting just now, for this holiday season, as many thoughts are racing through my mind. I’m happy to say that my personal heroes are very human ones. People who do what they can – the friend who goes on living with a broken heart, …the man in the street who helps up the lady stumbling in front of him, … the patient who decides to tell me, a stranger, about the most traumatic moment in his life, thereby facing his worst nightmares, …the child who stand up to the bully in the schoolyard… and so on.

All you heroes out there – I feel so much respect for you.