The Making Of Eve (Rae)

began from a line drawn
with a charcoal bone
sown in a bed of earth.
                                 Mother of thorns
                                that form the crown
                                 worn by the Prince.

Rib corset laced with serpents
hair fragrant with the feathers
of fallen        sons,

                                 the waterless canopy envies
                                 the Nile that flows from behind her iris
to nurse sweet rivers of grass
(green as the core
bearing the seeds).             She blooms
beneath the hand of her creator like breath of the sea
soothed between cliffs of sandy thigh, fluid with birth.
A silk flutter, gull's wings,
skim the arch between heaven
and the heave and settle of land.

Her hands flow with snakewinds of veins
strong enough to pluck an apple from a tree,
two flesh arms
in divine proportion        to a mother's breast
in which is sown the seeds
for the downfall of paradise.



©Rae Pater