Listening to records with my roommate

that summer. We were very young then.

We talked about the girl. The one we met

at the western shore but didn’t get her name.

 

We watched, furtively, every one

of her eccentric and mystical movements,

and the dueling colors in her eyes.

All of it imperfectly perfect.

 

Later, while putting on another LP,

he said, “If the way she looked

didn’t take you to church

then God doesn’t need you.”

 

“I don’t know about God”, I said,

remembering how she swayed this way and that,

“But if church felt like that I’d go more often.”