Dear Old Friend

I keep you nameless
not because I don’t know your name
but because it got to be
a game we playedafter a neighbor
from the Newcomer’s Club
dropped in as you and I were there
in my toy-strewn living room
wine glasses on the slate-topped table.
 
Daytime when other husbands were at work,
I introduced you as an old friend
to her dismay, wanting more.
From then on, it stuck
whenever we talked, and laughed.
But, after a few months
we took that right turn
and lost track of each other.
 
You may remember the baby
on my knee, same age as yours
in those earlier years
when you and your wife came to see us
in San Francisco, both families expatriates
from the Northeast. Albany followed for us,
Boston for you.
 
But that day, it was as if San Francisco
never happened,
Albany blew away in our clouds,
And the baby wasn’t drooling on my knees.
 
©2017