This is a re-worked older piece, the oldest parts of which grew from an immediate reaction to the news of John Denver's fatal plane crash on 12 October 1997. Apart from having been a fan of his music since I was a child, he was in the small list of celebrities, who had the same birth date as I do (i.e., 31 December). Ultimately, what I came up with at the time seemed rather sub-par and hackneyed, and I ended up tossing it aside with vague promises to myself that I would try and finish it properly one day. And, I did indeed fish it back out of the poetry junk-pile some three years later in 2000, when the movie "Final Destination" came out, and they so memorably used John's song: "Rocky Mountain High" in the soundtrack (and which, since then, has become an official State Song of Colorado... But I digress).

Unfortunately, my 2000 attempt at reworking the piece likewise wound up getting tossed back on the junk-pile yet again, as I still was not happy with it, and it has mostly languished ever since, although I would occasionally pick it up and try and poke at it a bit more from time to time.

Recently, the on-stage death of veteran Nashville folk singer David Olney made me pick up that old piece once again, and dust it off. There was just something about the news story that struck me: Mr. Olney was in the middle of a concert in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida on the 18th of January, 2020, and was said to have stopped in the middle of his third song, mumbled an apology to his fans, and simply lowered his head to his chest. Follow-on stories said that he'd simply had a fatal heart attack, and that he didn't even drop his guitar, or fall off his stool. Most of the comments in the news articles had similar themes: basically that few people can hope for a better ending than departing this life in the midst of doing what they love.

That, of course, made me think back to John Denver, who likewise passed into the Great Beyond, whilst doing that, which he loved.
Again, would that we could all be so lucky...

In the end, this piece is still a bit rougher than I would have preferred it to be, but maybe it works best that way. As usual, I will let you, the reader be the ultimate judge of that.