Eve's Crown

Eve's Crown

She walked out of Eden--

bared feet to sharp stones, bared shins to thorn.

She walked straight and resolute,

jaw set, steely, clear-eyed.

Mother of will.

And with the reek of its skin on her back

she remembers the lamb's bony knees folded in her lap

and how she teased it with mustard flowers.

Mother of blood.  Mother of the knife.

And rubbing a balm of tallow

into the splits and calluses of Adam's palm,

touching her finger to the creases in his brow--

Mother of penitence, tenderness and debt.

Mother of all weariness.

And hearing the tiger growl in the night,

she remembers his velvet muzzle,

the way she would rest her head on his fire-colored flanks

to feel the rumbling purr in the marrow of her bones.

She throws more tinder on the fire

and draws the baby tighter to her breast.

Mother of hungers.

Mother of fear.

And breaking the neck of the grouse with her strong hands,

she plucks its jeweled feathers

and studies them glinting in the sun.

Mother of cruelty.  Mother of wonder.

And walking through a fall of leaves,

a lilting shower of reds and golds,

but rising from the rustle and crunch, the haunting smell of rot.

And then each sharp green shoot and blade and bud of spring

a hymn of ransom.

Mother of seasons, of decay.

Mother of redemption.

In the laughter of her children--music.

In their sickness--the dead weight of dread and worry.

In their tears--the raw, fierce need to meliorate, to mend.

Mother of healing.  Mother of devotion.

And kneeling on bare ground, clutching Abel's bloody robe

keening into a bitter wind,

she rocks back and forth and back and forth.

Mother of rage, of envy.  Mother of secrets.

Mother of story.

Eve of the veiled face.

Mother of dishonor and shame.  Mother of silences.

Mother of desperation and yearning.

And, having purchased the world on credit--

Mother of absolute faith.

Eve the courageous.

Eve the defiant.

Eve--maker of the great trade--

ease for possibility, innocence for wisdom, bliss for joy.

Eve knowing first

what each and every daughter since has known,

holding the slippery pink newborn to the breast,

that death is and has always been

a fair price for life.