On that December day of '45 she became part of my life,
Of that vision unbelievably recoiling to
The same wide streets, the wire-fenced fields,
The trees spooling past the 400's northward drive,
The rhythmic clack of steel in oil
Shucking off the foreign days and nights.
My uniform was the opening
To her elegant brunet's fur-coated style,
The introduction to her smile,
There in the gently swaying blue-green plush,
With faintest smoke-of-diesel smell, and beyond
The outward dash of increasingly familiar miles
Toward the station stop
Where, helplessly, I saw her step into my past.