what I remember now about A Tale of Two Cities

and what I remembered

long before I first read it

is what my mother loved:

a perfect wording of light

glimpsed in a puddle on the street.

The image living in memory

without the words that bore it there.

When I read the book myself

I never found that passage

but I hold the thought of it dear,

as if I had been there,

reaching for a pen

as the sun broke over wet cobblestones.