Clement Wood

WHEN the storm-clouds piled between us,

In the dark and chasmed hour

When we struggled for a rebirth of our souls

And of our love for one another,

One thing held me to you.

It was not the expanding structures of love

That we had builded together;

It was not vows,

Nor inner promises of eternal fealty,

Nor our common purposes in life,

Nor the clenching grasp of passion—

It was the battered little coffee-pot

That we had bought together for five cents

From a ghetto push-cart,

That would not let me go.