It’s already been six years since we went to Paris,
not just the two or three it seems.

We hit the streets every morning after a cup of coffee
brewed in the tiny stove-top espresso maker
in the barebones room near the Luxembourg Gardens,
described by the Airbnb site as luxurious.

We negotiated frantic Metro changes, hurried
across the curved expanse of the Place de la Concorde,
allowed the Champs Elysees to sweep us along
its mile-long grandeur, followed the Rick Steves guide
to the Louvre, boated on the Seine.

On my favorite day we climbed Montmartre,
the sky October blue, the artists at work in the square,
the macaron shop, the haunts of the artists
whose names everybody knows. The blades
of the Moulin Rouge were still that day,
one of those times that seem to linger.

You stood an hour at a kiosk choosing souvenirs,
laughing when I chided you about your indulgent concept
of time, how slow you’d always been getting ready
for classes when we were roommates, how you went
Christmas shopping after my afternoon wedding
with a long drive downstate still ahead of you.

We’d tried to see each other once a year, occasionally
phoned. Your husband died. I remarried.
I was never more at peace than sitting on the old
bentwood rocking chair on your screened back porch
overlooking the salt marsh, nudged by a tide of memories.

We had discovered an Eiffel Tower barricaded by glass
and steel fencing. A few weeks after we left rioters set
the streets afire, and Notre Dame burned the next spring.

Tomorrow I’m driving up to Atlanta to see you in your new
house on Rose Cottage Drive. I am bringing wine
and a blue linen kitchen towel decorated with songbirds.