On a hot August night
Father Charlie and I
were sitting on the back porch.
The tip of my cigar
glowed orange in the dark,
and when he took a pull
on his scotch I could hear
the ice tinkle in the glass.
Out of nowhere he said—
How many angels,
do you imagine, can shimmy
on the head of a pin?
Sensing the game,
I countered—Or what was the herd
of swine thinking when so driven
to frenzy by cast-out devils
they jitter-bugged over the edge
of the cliff and plunged
like crazed lemmings
into the sea? He replied—
What do you suppose
caused a line of camels to
1-2-3-la-conga
through the eye of a needle?
As long as we are
on pins and needles, I said,
I always considered
the lost needle in a haystack
to be an allegory. And what,
he asked, does the needle
in that story symbolize?
God,
of course, I answered—
bright and shiny—
waiting to waltz