The Party
She makes her way down the one-lane road,
Away from the music, to be alone.
Against a line of wind-tossed trees
She makes her way. Down the one-lane road
A thin moon rises. She feels the breeze.
No one she knows knows she has gone
To make her way down the one-lane road,
Away from the music, to be alone.
At the party, her lover dances and sings.
He fills up the room with laughter and jokes,
Then gathers his boys to hammer down shots.
At the party, her lover dances and sings
With women who’d like to unbutton his heart.
He’s too drunk for love, so he lights up a smoke,
Sways to the music, and dances and sings.
His friends fill the room with laughter and jokes.
As she walks down the road, a whip-poor-will calls,
As if to portend her destination.
The pastured horses beside her run
As she walks down the road. A whip-poor-will calls
While she and the night companion as one.
No one she knows knows she has gone.
As she walks down the road, a whip-poor-will calls—
Anywhere from here is destination.
*
Robert Bernard Hass is the author of the poetry collection Counting Thunder (Wordtech, 2008) and the critical monograph, Going by Contraries: Robert Frost’s Conflict with Science (Virginia, 2002), which was selected by Choice as an “Outstanding Academic Title” in 2004. With Donald G. Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Henry Atmore, his is co-editor of the Letters of Robert Frost (Harvard UP). His poems and critical essays on modern poetry have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Sewanee Review, Agni, Kenyon Review, Literary Matters, American Journal of Poetry, Vox Populi, and Poetry Northwest. He is currently professor of English at Pennsylvania Western University, where he teaches courses in American literature, British literature, classical literature, and Shakespeare. Since 2019, he has served as the executive director of the Robert Frost Society.
