The garden of Eden would have been like this,

The moss-aged faces of the rocks in the stream,

The children paddling in the dazzled water

Full of joy and summer light.

Adam would not have had a blanket to lay on the ground,

No ham sandwich to unwrap from the sun-jewelled foil,

Eve would not have produced a tomato

From the cool bag like a conjuror,

Nor rolled a cigarette before eating her lunch,

But they would have sat under the same sky,

Wondered at the same surrounding world,

Passed the same still green dappled moment in the same unceasing flow.

 

Soon I will have to go,

To get back in the car and howl along the motorway,

But just for a moment, time opens its door,

And washed clean of past and future

We step through into timeless time,

Watching our barefoot son and daughter

Climbing through the river’s roar.