"recovered"

No more mistress,
no more dame--
only the queen
has asked to remain,
and remain she shall.

I no longer absolve;
I am absolved.
I am not the question,
nor the answer;
I am resolved.

Once a means to an end,
now the end of the means.
Burned through and through,
I find new uses for these fires:
a furnace for finding.

I was right; I do not need it.
No matter what he said,
regardless of what she demanded,
I knew what I wanted,
and that was to be my own--
to have my own--and
that would take some
unbinding, and a
different kind of discipline.

Once unbound, what to do?
Make use of those fires:
burn the ropes. Burn the
thorns. Burn the delicate
stories and the long nights,
the wishes that weren't mine,
the expectations
and the shoes of a man
I had to live in the light of.

* * *
The conflagration lasted
through the night,
and in the morning,
through the remains,
charred, ash, meaningless,
shone something different,
and it was good.

The wind will scatter the rest;
my penance is done,
this tenure completed.
Having seen and sung
what was to been and told,
the wanderer goes.

---
Revision: 10.21.05
MWL