On any given weekend day there are one million
six hundred fifty people playing at the game
of golf; one hundred of them are golfers.

On any given day there are four million people
working at writing poetry; forty-five of them
are poets.

On any given day a man has one dead father-
in-law whom he encounters periodically
in his wife’s behavior.

On any given day the man thinks of the biblical
phrase, “Let the dead bury the dead,” and wishes
the living would bury the dead, too.

On any given day wannabe golfers, wannabe poets,
golfers and poets ask the question, “Are there
ghosts?” The man knows that to be rhetorical.