Xando, or on waking from dreams in general.

In Cosi, once, I met with Sam
To talk of reams of poetry
He’d sent, to me, I had to cram
The way I would for an exam,
        If he were testing me.
I’d read five miles of Donsky’s sound
I talked to him of Donne and Pound
And told him that he had such skills,
And gave advice for free,
And as we ordered our refills,
He was bound to agree.

But Sam did not know all the words
Or names o’er which I’d hover,
And so I told him, poet- nerds
(While others hold in gentle girds)
Write, waking by a lover!
And so I taught him, though it’s odd,
My favorite word: the word Aubade,
A word I learned right here, in class
With Al, who thought it wasn’t crass
(Though cognoscenti’s teeth would clench)
To quite define this term from French
And so when we left to go home
With modern verse under our arms
We all had learned the many charms
Of the famed morning-after poem.
And now that my friend Sam D knew
He went and wrote an Aubade too!

Adrienne D. Mishkin