“Did you write the book of love?”

This is what the song “American Pie” asks you, songwriter Don McLean challenges you in those few words. Just who the f*** are you, anyway? Why should anyone need to factor you into any equation? You think you’re so great, perhaps? And it came about that I thought of that one line in that long masterpiece of a song. Maybe not to think I’m worthy in some great wash, but to think that we should give some things like that a try. I want to say it, “Yes I did. I wrote the book of love. Me.” Is that wrong, somehow?

…and upon completion of my main duty on this planet…

i have seen hints of the far shore
the light breaking on water and sand, still shy
as the horizon awakens, as if beginningless
the thousands of reasons for living in every breath
i was in the night all my days
my heart the only beat i could hear
the stars sometimes were beads of light, i imagined
myself playing in the savage heat of the desire
of the next moment, of the next sight
the dreaming that walked out of me and became flight
unstoppable the relentless blindness, the clue
tomorrow, and then, tomorrow, and then
inhaling the ghosts of my past selves
breathing the soul of the sky sometimes
how did eternity pass? i was watching the whole time
the healed cosmos, suddenly i got it
the planck scale shards that i sealed at the edge
and hope? i invented it when i was in hell
saw the face of the tree man beneath the red eye
there was never any darkness, void, my friend
she told me what to do when death smiled at me
saw the queer expression in his dark glasses
when i returned a wink instead
faith, i joined the heaven to earth in my lips
swallowing pure truth, so cool
could not believe my dreaming eyes
that there was naught but heaven, anywhere
that was the secret, the invisible mystery
that to imagine i was truly free
it was all it took for the sun to rise again