I played a cool game, which she encouraged by aloofness.
I split my time between the minstrel and the looking glass.
She chattered with the barkeep, extending only friendliness.
So, I joined in, a student registering for night school class,
signed for my tab and my tuition with studied carelessness –
an old gold-digger among the ferns and polished brash.

“Have you any idea what’s going on?” the keep asked me.
“I don’t think I really care,” I tossed back, unconvincingly.

That beauty and this beast eventually got together –
after I pursued her until she caught me.
Did we marry and live happily forever after?
Only the Ringmaster knows what she taught me.
We cannot articulate what we cannot speak of thereafter,
nor can I convey what was lost nor divulge what she brought me.

The barkeep indicated with a nod his crest-shield on the wall.
“Is it any wonder that you have finally arrived here, after all?”

The best in us brings out from us the worst
which we share when it is too much to contain.
The bile builds up and we think we will burst
if we cannot relieve the pressure we cannot restrain.
The result is that we develop an enormous thirst
from water loss or from the salts that we retain.

Wry humor marks the man who has given up complaining,
but sweetness from that old salt? There is no explaining.