Father Bill

Some appetites are stronger than bodies

Just look at how some people play hockey

All sorts of distractions from your studies

Can arise when you suspect that you see

That most of life's a game with young rules, or none

Except when you need something to believe

The rest of it can certainly be fun

But often, people practice to deceive

I am the son of disillusionment

Of faith invested, then withdrawn again

Of bitter laughter; I've learned what it meant:

That when they screw you, tell them to get bent

All bureaucracies belong to devils

They tell the institutions what to do

A hockey team, a church, a school--all levels

All ways of being that can alter you

If you devote yourself to them, truly

And then discover that they can betray

Who can blame you for acting unruly

And hating work, concentrating on play?

Beer has a way of breaking the cruel truth

To your own heart, about its real feelings

It does not take a very clever sleuth

To understand that it takes offerings

Your dignity, your credibility

Your memory, which can act as a guide

When navigating disability

You were wise and funny, when you were fried

But bodies cannot all insults abide

Sometimes your spleen is knocked onto the ice

Sometimes your church commits slow suicide

Or your students make you wish you could hide

Forever in a drink and a few laughs

A story clever enough to be true

All of those joints are really cenotaphs

Monuments for the living to review

Of those buried elsewhere, but fallen here

You were a beloved teacher, teaching me

To recognize that things are as you fear

And try to endure them; just wait and see

Perhaps, one of their mad stories is right

Once rid of this cruel flesh, we might move on

So much we cannot see (with our eyesight)

Might be there, to be read, once eyes are gone

Sometimes life with a wife stops being nice

Sometimes your kids make you wince, and think twice

Being human's absurdity on ice

Let's hope that we don't have to do it twice