ADAM REMEMBERS THE SERPENT

 

I should have flattered Eve more, learned to dance

to fight the boredom, should have mocked

the glib line she took like a hungry fish.

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Now we know forked tongues don't talk.

Was he just her dream? One of God's windstorm

tricks? The snake looked like a stick to me.

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It moved so many ways at once just like

her hips. She hummed to him while I hid

behind a tree and wondered where we were,

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whom to trust. A God we could not see

had ribbed her from me, a mystic surgeon's gift,

but His words slithered off her back like rain.

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Lost in shame: for years we scratched for grain

with rats, and babies tore her guts. We screamed

octaves at each other and called it song.

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Then one day she said there must be more

to earth than Eden and showed me how a flower

blooms from dirt. And when the children laugh

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or we taste the leavened loaf, we cobble back

a fragment of a perfect world while living humbly

here where wind is only wind, a stick is just a stick.

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Gary Stein