Garden Quarrel

1 The Change

There was something theatrical in the air,

like the coming of a circus.

I don’t know, the world seemed a dummy run

after that dawn-cold snake.

I realized life could be

like the nest of some tremendous bird.

I was always a religious bitch,

all prolepsis and superstition.

2 Reason Is But Choosing

Eve ate the apple

she tasted the snake

Adam ate Eve

he tasted the apple

Their hunger

had the grandeur

of a famine

A tristesse

falls upon the scene

like a light rainfall

There is something mysterious

about lyric poetry

The long glare walls

of evening

were constructed in a spirit of play

Adam’s a tragédien

Eve opens and closes her legs like a book

No one is waiting for life to begin

3 The Snake

The snake says it needs a tree, so here is a tree.

It says, make the tree stir its tops and play

their emerald lights. I do. I slide the clouds

off the sun for good measure.

Two nights it has lain in wait, this figure with no arms.

Now it approaches the shimmering lights in the tree,

studies the glassy dullness of the couple.

They don’t know yet that they are alive.

The snake tells her to take her thumb out of

her mouth; a soul needs the presence

of desire. It says it’s worth dying to understand

the conditions under which figure, tree, man,

or woman might smash. She moves toward

the moral impunity of the apple. I ease it from its branch,

so that it is snake-low. She eats it carefully,

inspecting the potential of the snake with each bite.