Friday Afternoons

by Ronald Moran

 

On Friday afternoons, when my phone
                        rings,             
its murky screen often says, Out of Area,
                        or
lists numbers trailing unfamiliar, exotic
                        area codes.
If answered, it may deliver a robo-message,
                        or else
live callers mangling my simple surname,
                         one as

transparent as the skin over a girl's wrist,
                        an image
of years ago that recurs like a song-worm,
                        or like
the face of a girl I saw once when I was 14
                        at
a summer playhouse.  Now as a widower,
                        I wonder,
Is she alive, and has she had a good life?
                        I answer it.

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