Goodbye, friend

An old friend passed away yesterday. It was not unexpected, but tragic and untimely nonetheless. While this poem, written by William Logan, doesn't speak directly to her (or my) situation, I thought it appropriate for this quite sad time.


FOR AN OLD GIRLFRIEND, LONG DEAD

Lying on that blanket, nights on the seventh green--
in the dry air the faint scent of gasoline,

nothing above us but the ragged moon,
nothing between but a whispered soon...

Well, such was romance in the seventies.
Watergate and Cambodia, the public lies,

made our love seem, somehow, more true.
Of the few things I wanted then, I needed you.

I remember our last arguments, my angry calls,
then the long silence, those northern falls

we drifted toward our newly manufactured lives.
Does anything else of us survive?

That day in Paris, perhaps, when you swore
our crummy hotel was all you were looking for--

each cobbled Paris street, each dry baguette,
even the worthless sous nothing you'd forget.

Outside, a block away, the endless Seine
flowed roughly, then brightly, then...

Then nothing. Nothing later went quite that far.
I remember that spring. Those breasts. That car.

---William Logan