Memorial Roll Expanded to Include Honorary Absences

At election, the secretary read
The absent right in with the dead.
The room murmured, “Hell,
That is tender as well,
But can tenderness chair us?” it said.

They were morally still in the hall,
Though they had not been seen there at all.
When the ballots came near,
Folks got suddenly clear:
“Can a ghost make the quorum?” and all.

No one wanted the minutes to show
Who first told the estranged they could go.
So they padded the roll
With a spiritual poll,
Which is warm till you need a hard “no.”

When a merger made bodies run thin,
Honorary absences wandered right in.
It’s compassionate math:
Keep esteem on the path
Till the vote asks whose ass fills a chair.

The absent were tallied in full,
Increasing the quorum’s own pull.
The officer seat
Was declared incomplete
By a metric impressively null.

They weren’t in the room for the vote.
The clerk didn’t care what he wrote.
He counted them all
In the empty old hall,
And that is the end of the note.

A missing attendee is dire,
A threat to the structural fire!
Their spiritual mass
Is required to pass,
Lest the whole institution expire.

The names from the old vacant chairs
Have taken to answering prayers.
They sit in the hall
Through the winter and fall,
And manage the chapter’s affairs.