Part I.  Like Gods Falling

At first—
new trembling
and then she didn’t want
to be—

alone

with guilt

or seen

as **** half-eaten evidence
So she held it out to him
with her half-hearted, “It's OK.”
her crippling distance

“Why doesn’t she just embrace me
as before?”
He thought
that he had never seen her eyes that way—
with no words for their ruin
he loved her fearfully more

Gorged in the aftermath of forbidden
fat and animal fruit
Sick with excuses
Staring at
the core of lust
Rationalizing
Food?  Beauty? Intrigue?

Wisdom!

Searing awful terror
into each other’s minds

Part II.  Love and War

In the years between
the harrowed rows of sprouting corn
they found pleasure without plan
that bound them more than guilt had severed

How curious the textures of a man
in sunlight

her power?
In all the brilliance she had bargained for

How curious this burning for her
in the sodden life of rotting

She was always holding him now
from the scorching day
as the earth sizzled and swam
in seas of senseless—
background drone of locust and revenge
sealed in sweat and clutching labor

She was always holding him back by night
from the icy crackling mad!
his restless hunting hate!
And sometimes, while she pleaded
he would seize her
Make her pay!

For that afternoon

by the well where the boy was washing
A basket of vegetables returned
a bowl of blood

Part III.  Grief

Prepare the darling carcass
Shroud it in her pleas
clawing in the mud beside its silence
consumed beyond all fire by her anguish
“Can this not be enough to make him move?
Yes! He did! I’m sure I saw it!”
Can this not be enough?”
to stop the knowing…
grief from pouring into space?

Not even light escapes
____

Returning from the Mount of Meeting
hollow chores
collecting fatwood
grinding joyless grain

From corner of her eye
she watches the boy
walk toward the forest
spear in hand
She pauses
looking down
at hands on stone
that once had cradled...
Breath catching on jagged sorrow

She continues to grind

bitterly pregnant


Part IV.  Endings

Descended now
Reclining heap
reflects before a sun’s surrender
His face gleams with last light
hair blown back by volleys of wind

Her face
Not visible
as we are behind them
Her head rests in his lap
She is on her side
Soles of her shoes
mute and toward us
His eyes search the sky for a god—any god!
Her God

Exhaustion poses them past
the point of question
When the matter of “Why?”
becomes each other

Close in

the net of twilight
Dulled of hope and pain
at the edge of all that can be done...

...everything is gray going on black—
but we always knew that