PARTING FRIENDS IN ROBERT FROST’S WOOD

And so,
We spend the evening drinking,
Talk of thoughts we’ve talked before.
Smoking;
You, your dream-sweet pipe
And I, impotent cigarettes,
And sit,
Jazz music darkly playing,
Like cats upon the floor.

You speak of your road, I of mine,
And sip martinis,
Gin, but for the glass its in
And olives that we suck from sticks.
So much
We are afraid to say.
We raise our toasts like lighted torches,
To mad barons
Who would animate an ancient flesh.
To monsters that might have been.

We ask
About the ones we love
Blushing at this new
And fragile thing we both have found,
The strange, exotic insects we’ve become,
And realize with anxious smiles
There’s more to us than me and you.