For a Friend who Comes to Mind at Three in the Morning

This place where love began
is diminished as much
as Bill Sloane was a man.

Well, as you would have said,
It’s finished as such.
Meaning Hell, I’m dead.

We talked and drank one night
a while till dawn;
you told Jim Beam and me
There’ll come a time you might

happen together, you two,

when I’ll be gone.
Toast him that used to be.
So. Now you are. So now we do.