Never Too Late

One half hour remains this nineteenth day

of March: thirteen years of Josef’s life

and twenty-three since Pastor Joe’s. The

mix this night has had the pulse of Red

Hot Chili Peppers, confounding dreams

of Californication…. It fits

Joe’s birthday gift: a Fender made in

Mexico, enticing riffs and strains

that make more sense in the playing than

the listening, wistfully, to (say)

‘Beast of Burden’ or any such song

from the Rolling Stones. Now it is Yes

and the ‘South Side of the Sky’. And then

it will be ‘Ten Years Gone’, which Uncle

Josh once aptly said was Zeppelin’s best.

We play, on occasion, ‘Wish You Were

Here’—not a Fender song per se, but

oh, we wish he were here. Like Lennon’s

‘Imagine’, which came to us unlike-

ly in the hands of Pastor Joe, who

unwrapped the album and had the guts

to let young sons imagine there’s no

heaven—seize that if you try. Good God,

it worked not for any predisposed

result. Imagine all you want. In-

effable grit in divine dispatch.

The equinox is nigh, and Lent is

in full swing. Joe and his brother Ben

and sister Em take turns in letting

me in to heaven in advance. Yes,

it may be apocryphal to say

we have any claim on God’s domain.

Properly we should scan the site for

snakes; we shouldn’t californicate

the place; we’d better take the blindness

of Milton, who fondly asks why he

(of all) should examine fate—and fair

concede 'they serve Him best who only

stand and wait.' Will do. And with Joe, too.