That Reminds Me

…

Just imagine yourself seated on a shadowy terrace,
And beside you is a girl who stirs you more strangely than an
heiress,
It is a summer evening at its most superb,
And the moonlight reminds you that To Love is an active verb.
And your hand clasps hers, which rests there without shrinking,
And after a silence fraught with romance you ask her what she is
thinking,
And she starts and returns from the moon-washed distances to the
shadowy veranda,
And says, Oh I was wondering how many bamboo shoots a day it
takes to feed a baby Giant Panda.
Or you stand with her on a hilltop and gaze on a winter sunset,
And everything is as starkly beautiful as a page from Sigrid Undset,
And your arm goes round her waist and you make an avowal
which for masterfully marshaled emotional content might have
been a page of Ouida’s or Thackeray’s,
And after a silence fraught with romance she says, I forgot to or-
der the limes for the Daiquiris.
Or in a twilight drawing room you have just asked the most mo-
mentous of questions,
And after a silence fraught with romance she says, I think this
little table would look better where that little table is, but
then where would that little table go, have you any sugges-
tions?
And that’s the way they go around hitting below our belts;
It isn’t that nothing is sacred to them, it’s just that at the Sacred
Moment they are always thinking of something else.

– Ogden Nash