How Evel Got to Heaven

Appeared in the Press-Citizen, December 2007

in memorium
Evel Knievel, 1938-2007

More than the fire and brimstone downward pouring,
it was Charon’s ferry, paddled safe and swell,
that made Knievel see he’d gone to hell
and worse—that hell was downright boring.
In life, he’d seen his likeness in a doll,
broken sixty bones, jumped over canyons,
and fended off both upstarts and also-rans,
but nothing prepared him for this brutal fall.
No fountains, no jumpsuits, no crowds to cheer him on,
everything painfully slow and on the level:
eternal doldrums fashioned by the devil
and tended without a dare by Satan’s spawn.
How could he escape? What could he do for kicks?
Then Evel looked behind him: the River Styx.