What We Don’t Hear About at All

You know what we don’t hear about at all? The fun that Eve

and Adam had – no, not before their so-called “fall” (which

largely was a bore): more after they adjusted to it. True, it took

adjustment – for example, when they sampled their first shame

at being naked – till the feints and coy come-hither’s with which

wearing clothes acquainted them outdistanced any joy

in unclothed life they could recall: they learned the arts of being

“bad;” to find the lust they felt, the guilt they had, delicious;

the swell of body parts pernicious underneath a soft thin cling

of covering, now woven only for allure: the hot complexities of sex –

the lure transgression was – to do what any lover does when he

or she can’t bear another disingenuous resistance – to tear away

the cloth, to end up tossed and bare upon the floor: to feel

the jealous sting that lovers bring to the unwieldy thing a zealous

passion is: that to adore the flesh is often to abhor it – and to shut

the door on peace of mind, yet open it to riches they had no idea

in Eden they could find – whose each fresh danger was the point –

was what anointed their new complicated lives – which flourished,

if unnervingly, in contemplation – nourished any sense that what

they’d once called “Soul” at last might know it could behold

the cosmos in the heart that it was part of, and be whole.

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