One Poet to Another in a Small Town

I wonder, did you ever write one about our

tryst in which we awaken after many years

Rip Van Winkle-like in Safeway’s snack shop .

Here is where adultery stops and whispers

into the ears of old birds in line at the pharmacy window

until I realize this one belongs to me and begin.

As far as the lovemaking goes, yes there are memories

yet those were merely acts in the night by dove light.

I was never so lonely and alone, as all adulteresses

naturally are, usually in tears, broken, beaten down.

Homing in on hope, relief, sorrow. Paring it down to pain.

Now here in this well-lit town square near the salads and slaws

we sit with cold cuts and those within earshot

struggle to comprehend what we don’t bother to hide.

You talk about Gilbert and Gerber , I about their signatures.

We are famous today near the half-off –Christmas-bulk!

We’ve both known so many of our kind as if

you weren’t even one of them and I just a nurse

moonlighting while people lean and stoop to hear

our clandestine clamor about blood sugars and petit mal!

Yet we throw caution to the wind every time we meet

blurting out narratives for which we’ve kept in touch

all these years, taking the occasional pulse of an old secret.