Lines Written After A Friend Called From The Dublin House by E. S. Slater

My friend, the message that you’d called,
(And where you called from)
Sent me outdoors; the stillness of all
The snow, blue in the city lights, mum
About my long, jealous smokes and envious ales.
 
I thought of you alone, if solitude loving
Is ever lonely in such ease and comfort.
I was here, and wondering what you were having
And what small talk you made, and to what effect.
 
To that splendid day my mind returns
What, four years past? Edward in the library
With maps of yore, us finding Scott and Burns
And laughing under the Manhattan sky.
 
The Dublin House was pink-harped serene,
The barkeep in white apron and shirt
Smiled, his face another map, the scene
Lamp-lit wood and mirror, saloon as flirt.
 
Beside ourselves, we pleasured lascivious stout,
Wanton, drawn out smokes, the barroom tarrying.
Like Tam we bowsed and reveled in not
Being in at home with attendant harrying.
 
Then, the seducer made his move,
Inveighing with whiskey two unbidden jars.
That sly, twinkling Hibernian cove!
(His sort has long made for happy bars).
 
Setting them before us with the élan
Of a fellow sufferer. “Something to start
Your motors running?” Our delight childlike, and
How our motors ran! How loath we were to part!
 
 
Thus more pints, black as deprivation, bitter as obligation
Appeared and disappeared, as they so often do.
One loves a gusting January afternoon libation
As night slips into our grateful purview.
 
For me, this unplanned jollity far surpassed all our planned
I like to think that your motor, anyway, continues humming
As well as when I saw you last; that you, sir, are with dram,
Are well, and that like hours are in our life forthcoming.

 
 E. S. Slater is a writer living in Cambridge, MA.  He has recently completed a novel, Just This, and is working on a series of pandemic-themed short stories and poems. He is in the throes of submitting short stories and poems at present.