A postscript to James Joyce's "The Dead"

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

While every falling flake
May be ephemeral
Emblazoned in each swirling reflection
Is the silvery glint of
Oneness diving before
The light.

Bongos

Once I bongoed
It all became clear,
But then there are those
Who haven't bongoed, and worse,
Sad and forlorn,
Those that never would.

Astronomy

I eye the stars
but do not wish
to know their names or
the constellations they form,
pontoon bridges for thought.

I only wish to sense
as clearly as they
the light that webs us
together.

Standing up for Joseph

He wasn't just hanging around,
Attending.
She was pretty.
He was a man.
Who starts these stories?

My mother told me how only he
Helped at my birth, how
He wiped her brow with a wet cloth
And wept for joy when he
Placed me in her arms
For the first time.

When he passed, I walked into the desert
And slept beneath a star smeared sky
Finally seeing, three days later,
High in the streaks above, a smile from
The only wise man I've ever known.

On "The Passion Of The Christ"

Whom did it pain more,
as the nails bit his flesh
Jesus, thinking he was God
(with all which that implies),
or the faithless thief
hanging to his left?

Golf

A beautiful mistress
who offers me just enough favors
to insure my return
when she can then,
more often than not,
treat me with scorn and derision
before promising, with a seductive grin,
to be better next time.

Eluding the tackler

The past is always talking.
So much time putting me together.
But if attention outpaces
Understanding's cozy embrace
All life, my thoughts being part,
Unfolds effortlessly, fluidly.

Whatever I'm concluding is in
Complete, is partial, is
Wrong.

As everything everythings everything
Where are the dead ends?