An Evel Knievel Elegy
By Brendan Galvin

We have all felt our parachutes
malfunctioning at a job interview
or cocktail party, with bystanders
reading the freefall on our faces,
and some of us have imagined
how it must have felt for you
above the Snake River Canyon
or the fountains outside of Caesar’s
Palace, though a mental bungee
reversed our flops before we were
converted to sacks of poker chips and spent
a month or more in a coma. You were
our star-spangled Icarus, Evel,
while we dressed off the rack
for working lives among the common
asps and vipers, never jumping
the rattlers in what you and
the networks considered a sport.
Stunts, Evel. We loved their heights
and distances from our gray quotidian
so much we bought the kids three
hundred million dollars’ worth
of your wheels and getups. You were
our airborne Elvis, and rode
your rocket-powered bike through fire.
Which we admired, though some,
annealing or annulled, knew that
they stand in fire all their lives,
and turned away, and didn’t applaud,
and would not suffer the loss
of your departure.