Your voice meets me in the

street where I wait

in the rain for a taxi.

This street is newly paved.

The scent of smoke and oil

hover, curl in the air.

 

There wasn’t any pavement

where we lived, on the coast,

only gravel, mud and snow.

The winter months were

best when we simmered in 

out nest, wintering like wasps.

 

The white clapboards preserved

us like a museum vault.

We celebrated Spring by

splashing them with schoolhouse

red, a sign, you said, of something

we cherished. But paint cracks and

 

fades quickly in sandy, salty air.

You left in October before the 

first snow. There was a long note,

more than I planned to do.

 

It is still raining, and this glistening

street reminds me of the night sky,

the way stars shine out over the 

ocean, a million hard diamonds.