Last lunch with Leonard Dufresne

––Historically memorable are 8 with the works to travel

at “Moby's Coney Island" from the steamy troughs behind the counter,

4 for me and 4 for Dufresne, in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Art students in 1966. We knew how far our stomaches could run.

––Most recently in July of 2023 the first stop on his "farewell tour"

found us at the “Cove Restaurant” in the city of our births set along

the running Taunton below the hill of Fall River, Massachusetts

in the shadows of sweltering textile mills, and the lingering 

echoes of Sarah and Andrew Borden when on August of 1829:

               “Lizzie Borden took an axe

               and gave her mother 40 whacks

               and when she saw what she had done

               she gave her father 41”.

––At the “Cove” I ordered fish and chips;–– haddock,

the sweet, flakey catch-of-the-day gathered

from the nets of the stern-fishers out of New Bedford.

Leonard ordered cherrystone clams followed by

oysters on the half-shell; slimy little delicacies 

which made Dufresne moan in the ecstasy of a man in love,

and the best way to say “goodby” to a life-long friend is don’t,

and simply let the man eat.