("I had an appointment with myself...")

CATHERINE DAVIS

COLD COMFORT

In Memory of Joe Abrams

In that dark year

In Greenwich Village

Who else would it be?

Twenty years apart,

All summer long

All night long,

We drank gin and water.

Up from the slums,

Still poor, and getting old,

A one-time artist

Who knew he had failed,

A one-time gambler

Down on his luck

Without love

(And none from me),

You shrugged your shoulders.

It was hard work for us

Even to get along.

On a hot day in July

I left for good.

A few years later, you died.

It is cold comfort

To both the mourned

And the mourner

That the tears come with death.

I thought you had nothing

To teach me.

Structure

30 lines · 7 stanzas