The Prodigal

At some point reality hits your head like sledgehammer and everything sharpens acutely into focus. You exorcise the pretensions.You flush down the grandiose dreams. You fade out all fantasies and demolish the castles in the air. You hit rock bottom and settle down to brass-tacks... but they are like rusted metal struts clawing an ashen sky at ground zero. There's nothing you want. There's nothing anyone can give. There's nothing to ask. There's nothing to keep and, even, nothing to give. After all, what would you do with corn-cobs? So, downbeat you take the long trudge home. You know that there can't be a welcome. Just, maybe, a place to eke out... till the last ebbs of life slide away. And gazing at the approaching Good Friday, the foot of that bleeding cross seems to be the only vestige of hope in a world gone parched. There under a darkened sky and a crumpled form on a cursed tree lay the only hope for all humankind.