Remembered

Jack Matthews

We walked through puddles of black water,
still as cold coffee . . . felt the thread-thin rain
blister on our faces and in our hair...
walked the midnight to still sleep and talked
of God and chance and future . . . those days
of undergraduate concern, my sweet, have riddled
deep into my drowsing will, have become
the me I talk about when I am all alone.
Listen. I hear nightrain shake its air
and old November is cranking up to start.
This is our time. Remember? Always,
an earnest young girl in a belted raincoat
is walking slowly toward me... her breath
is visible in the night, her loving palpable.
The lovely girl with tin drops of moisture
on her hairtips and eyes that sound happy
in the drizzle, brings back thoughts of God
and chance and time's cold cheating
and I hear you always speaking my single name
beneath the squeak of the rain's small wheels.