Nightfall

Tonight we celebrated their graduation. I remembered my own. My table had three alumni and three alumnae and me; seven of us who had once passed through portals symbolically the same. I saw the last person leave, her steps echoing in the stone. There was one young man playing the piano in the dark. I walked by, and did not look back. For now.

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The air is wet with rainy promises,
The sky has yet to unfold; where we sit
Seats ten, in life at work and play, my friends.
Memory, old gorgon with her kisses
Will turn our nights to stone, a candlelit
Tribute to these, the funniest of ends.

When it is done, the tables folded stack
Like tired bulls, challenged and then beaten;
There is no return, no, no going back
Nothing of this bitterness will sweeten

Save that we make, forge in distant fire
More promises: that we will meet again,
That though all time and fate conspire,
We shall one day remember what was then.