Eve Poem by John Dixon

I took her furtive page
of classroom writing book
and came at dusk, under the windows
of the West-Herts town,
to the crossroads she had named.

Her voice through half-light
promised ‘Saturday'
and when, at the chosen noon,
my bus reached Pendley, she got on,
the blue eyes found me,

and the housewife
who shared my seat
looked at us both
and found another place:
in sudden coupledom we rode to Tring.

The Roman road still severs
the green back of the downs,
the Misbourne and the Bulbourne slake
the dust of Chiltern towns,
but time has borne our names away
as rivers bear the rain,
with all the years and all the loves
that will not be again.

At Wigginton we climbed The Twist
to her family's farm
where air was Shorthorns' breath,
and speech cropped with the silage
from the land, and the house slept
secret with the fragrance of her womanhood.

Hockeridge and Hawridge -
our places are the rhymes
from unwritten verses spoken
to the rhythm of the times
and the metre of the down land
without etiquette or art
or instruction but the bidding
of her lips and beating heart.

Round the chalk hills
that line the Vale of Aylesbury,
I loved her for a summer time or two
and then forgot.
But twilight distances
call up the time, rich as the cool sap
of the Northchurch grass
in which we lay.