Poem, neat pseudonym
For thoughts in disarray,
Tell how we’d gone that day
Separately to the gym.

I did things on a mat
To make me flexible.
The room was bare and chill;
I could relate to that.

You must have waded straight
Into the billowing steam,
Wanting to sweat your frame
Till choler stored of late

Should sparkle in your hair
And trickle down your chest.
So neither would have guessed
His missing half was there

Except that someone sane
(Between “my” room’s and “yours”
Respective temperatures)
Had set a small, fogged pane

Through which—quick to bemuse
Wits for a change wiped clear—
Our eyes met. Oh my dear!
Against such interviews

Each pressed a sorry nose
And made his goldfish face:
Not much of an embrace
But better, I suppose,

For that. In ways a lot
Less fondly matter-of-fact
Might Eskimo enact
His bond with Hottentot…

So be it. Dried and clad,
We took our homeward way,
Stopping for a parfait
Aux fraises at the Old Grad.