The night circles Around the full moon Like an albatross circles The light house at the docks.

Cars on Michigan Avenue Flash eyes of ruby and amber As notes of the sidewalk Saxaphonist split the river Of evening walkers.

The hand in all the stop Signs signals a secret the optic nerve can never Decode. The only key To mystery is music.

Tall towers put on their Tuxedos of light and vertical Lines, and line the boulevards Striking rakish poses, polishing Their pickup lines.

A bass guitar joins in the evening Music, rising her - an anonymous striking Woman - up and up into The gaint circus tent - sky at dusk. She vanishes from sight. Perhaps Her acrobatic leap and fall will be that Of wind and rain, expected tomorrow.

Seated at a table in a smoky Bar, I trace the moist ring My beer mug has left behind On green leather buffed by Many anonymous elbows

A year I say to myself as My finger glides, between When we drank here first And now, when we drink again.

Soon we will have to walk out Into the night, into different times Soon we might become different selves, Perhaps unrecognizable beyond Different borders. Those whom I

Come to love leave - perhaps teaching Me to love even more. And those whom I Could have come to love leave as well, leaving Regret like smell of cigarette smoke in one's hair.

But tonight as I take the final sip from the mug The last and lasting thing I taste - often the only sweet Thing in an often bitter world - is love.