Eve Thinks
This tree
is a braid pulled taut,
held up and away
from the nape of the earth.
It is tree-brown.
It is tree-green.
Its fruits are apple-red.
Its words are sparse.
But its dappling
is a sort of Morse
I think I understand.
Esau
I never understood your fate, or how
if time is an arrow, it strikes
late, if at all. I have known
a hunger I would undo
my own good birth to sate
as well. The clock yokes
all who walk the thick
meal of earth, so why—why
are we to hate you? I too
have known trickery, sunk
in the warm salt bath of a lie,
the desire for vengeance
a pillar of fire swording
the brown land of my chest. Prince,
I commiserate and curse
how if time is an arrow, it strikes
us in the back. I never understood
a word.
Bathsheba, to David
Sire,
You drew me down this
path, how I have drawn the dark
waters about my bath, like
a candle in the black
jar full of tar—which is
night turned wound,
when you ashed the fire of
my star: my love for whom
I washed.
