From where I stand
at the third floor window of the tenement,
the street looks shiny.
It has been washed and rinsed by rain.
Beyond the silver streaks of the streetcar tracks
a single streetlight stands
in a pool of wet light. It is night.
St. Louis. Nineteen forty-seven.
I have just come home from the orphanage
to stay.
Years later, I will be another person.
I will almost not remember this summer—not
at all. But for now—with the streetlight
reflecting an aura on the wet sidewalk,
with dark behind me in the dirty
two rooms we call home,
for now, I see it all.
Tomorrow I will begin to try to forget.
But in this moment everything is clear:
who I am, where I am, and the clean place
that I have left behind.
As clear as the streetlight: how distinct
its limits in the vast dark and the rain.
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2005 by Pat Schneider from Another River: New & Selected Poems, (Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2005). Poem reprinted by permission of Pat Schneider and the publisher.