Frappè is milkshake in Italian.
Frappè (Milkshake)
The station man didn’t look a day over 44,
He told me what street and nothing more.
The drive was Eleanor and upon which was the diner known as the “Della Torre”.
The kind waitress asked what she could “do me for?”,
I told her what flavor and nothing more.
The milk for my shake she did pour and meanwhile I thought back on the war.
There was creeping barrage, jagged landscape, and concertina wire.
The people back home called me a liar until they heard of the ways their fathers, sons, and brothers came to expire.
The letters back and forth helped say how they felt their final days, fathers, sons, and brothers with mortal desire.
I wrote in the rain while some never got to write again,
forever thankful for the familiar response, in the trench I was ensconced.
Upon the Isonzo front, we Italians bore the brunt,
soldiers never meant to be, fighting those from Austria-Hungary.
Some guilty and some innocent among us all,
which moral group I belonged to I refuse to recall.
Now in the present moment I drown those thoughts in Frappè,
but from the memories I will never truly get away.
And if there’s any advice I can give,
it’d be that when you’re blue, enjoy the simplicity of chocolate sweet, fair, and true.
Ciao to you!