Last Days

We visit by phone as the morphine haze   

retreats, late afternoon, most days.   

Our mingled past is set against the pin-   

hole lights of cars cruising the blacked-out streets:   

we four in the college smoker popping No-Doz,   

honors students carrying heavy course loads   

tipped sideways by sex, one by one discarding   

our virginities on the altar of inverse pride,   

ironing our blouses with Peter Pan collars   

to wear on dates with those 90-day Wonders,   

ensigns in training for the Second World War   

in the Business School across the Charles River.

We called ourselves the Unholy Four.   

Whenever any three of us met on campus   

we huddled to bray Austria! Russia! Prussia!

in unison. It came out sounding like Horseshit!

Post graduation one year, look at us:   

my new husband atop your even newer   

one's car singing the bawdy verses   

of "Roll Me Over" in a drunken tenor   

while the scandalized uncles and aunties   

—it wasn't enough that you'd wed a Chinese—   

wrung their hands. You drove off   

trailing Just Married in two languages.   

Now BJ is gone, and Hettie. You have, they say,   

only days. It is my plan to go with you   

as far as the border. I've been that far—   

Did I come back from there morally improved?   

Somehow better equipped to support you   

this side of the douane and wave,   

your two cats curled like commas beside you   

as the barrier lifts and you drive on through?