I drove by the morning she slipped away to college

Her parents and brother stood by

As our sweet summer faded.

Promising to write,

Our resolve was already slipping.

 

She had given me the gift of chatter:

On long nights, never before or since,

I wasted hours on phone banter,

Lost in her sweet girlish twang,

She, happy to lose track of time with me.

 

That morning my fluency went south.

Her best friend would call me, straining to please.

Her flat suburban drawl drifted

Into my fumbling pleasantries

Hastening

The hang-up.

 

Five more years: no romancing the phone.

The wires sparked a little

With chatty Kathy, my wife-to-be.

She filled my awkward silences.

I loved her laugh, her bubbly alto line

But my bass was an artless drone,

My part, riddled with rests.

 

Recalling that summer,

Our mistake was thinking we would write,

When the magic was all in the wires:

Aimless conversation, a miraculous give-and-take

In a perfect key we had stumbled on.

We had mastered both instrument and music.

No wonder phone chatter lost its charm

The morning I lost her to long distance.