In the bar
of the hotel
across the street
from the train station
where he and Sgt.Frank
had come to wait
that hour for their bus
he finally asked the barmaid
with the auburn, close-cropped hair
in his pained and brutish french
the name of the music
    "This?,"
she returned in crisp Anglo syllables
    "or the previous?"
    "The...uh...previous...,"
he replied,
tentative, halting, schoolboy words,
and she placed upon the thickly varnished bar top
the bright orange compact disc:
                Corsican Polyphonies
    "At first,"
she continued, rinsing glasses,
    "I could not listen without crying,
They were so...,"
    "Bittersweet," he offered,
riding the lift of the wine,
    "...like life."
her eyes looked up to his,
smiled into them
a moment
    "Yes. Yes,...as life"
in that moment so achingly one
with the close cropped one
in the bar
of the great tall windows
through which he had watched
the snow fill the streets
of Chamonix
that holy afternoon...
                                                    he curled his arm
                                                    beneath, across her
belly
                                                    cupped softly in his
palm
                                                    the sweet weight of her
breast
                                                    peeling his damp and
cooling groin
                                                    from her pinkened rump
                                                    then slid his mouth
                                                    over the damp, auburn,
close-cropped
                                                    hair
                                                    unable to retrieve the
fallen sheet
                                                    that gathered at their
knees
                                                    unable to hold the dying
light
                                                    the fading, winter light
                                                    about them
                                                    until
Sgt Frank coughed
and said
    "It's about that time,
    Billy Boy."
swallowing the rest of his wine
in an audible gulp...
our Billy Boy set his own
unfinished glass
softly beside the last of his coins,
spun off the stool
                                                    there will be a time for
the Gredos.....
and followed in the pale blue wake
of Sgt Frank's cigarette
into the bittersweet, silver afternoon
of Chamonix,
and the rest of his days.




Posted October 8, 1999