Equinox


It is Oxford, a spring morning in
nineteen-fifty-eight. I am dawdling
along St. Giles, history heaped
on either side of me, walking
slowly to the girl I’m meeting, this
morning, my and surely her spring
equinox. She has dazzled me,
the shifts of her hips, the buoyancy
of her heart. I feel joy, this morning,
and shall still feel joy, at her newness,
in memory’s portraiture, decades on. 

But I am aware, even now, in nineteen-
fifty-eight, that she has been Elizabethan
Dorcas, a convent girl, mademoiselle,
will yet be Brigitte, Jayne and Emma.
Yet knowing that, I know too, this
morning, here, along St. Giles, that
she and I are particular and wonderful,
her buoyancy, my dazzlement.

Robert Nisbet

If you have any comments on this poem, Robert Nisbet would be pleased to hear from you.