She said, If tomorrow my world were torn in two, <br />Blacked out, dissolved, I think I would remember <br />(As if transfixed in unsurrendering amber) <br />This hour best of all the hours I knew: <br />When cars came backing into the shabby station, <br />Children scuffing the seats, and the women driving <br />With ribbons around their hair, and the trains arriving, <br />And the men getting off with tired but practiced motion. <br /> <br />Yes, I would remember my life like this, she said: <br />Autumn, the platform red with Virginia creeper, <br />And a man coming toward me, smiling, the evening paper <br />Under his arm, and his hat pushed back on his head; <br />And wood smoke lying like haze on the quiet town, <br />And dinner waiting, and the sun not yet gone down.<br /><br />Phyllis McGinley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-5-32/
