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Searching for common interests
A sonnet by Robert Stone

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In Advent Christmas parties are in force,
providing opportunities to meet
a stranger who has also come by course
of being with companions on a beat.

And not by chance in winter and in spring
the search for common interests goes on,
the testing possibilities to string
eternal thoughts in parallel neat spawn.

But finally in fall a parting comes --
one chooses new adventures in the west,
the other stays in place where habit runs,
each hopes for satisfaction and for rest.

A handshake seems too small a gesture when
there may not be togetherness again.