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.”