A pale-yellow leaf
turning on its twig and dropping,
growing smaller, flatter,
like your face today
at roundabouts and slipways
on the motorways south,
sliding away from me
down a labyrinth of difference.

And yet you lay in my arms
all night long,
and your neat young roundness
left its imprint on my palms,
hurting me with the tenderness
Eve knew for Adam,
me, an anonymous woman,
and you, some laddie from the North.