Friday, April 1, 2011

Greetings...and welcome (or welcome BACK) to my poetry blog...in celebration of National Poetry Month!
Last April, I began this blog with the intention of only posting daily for a month.
I really enjoyed the adventure, and had several followers suggest that I should have kept it "going"...
so I am excited to begin again...and who knows, maybe my musings and writings will seep into May, then June, and July....

The following poem came about after having a most lovely summer soiree in my friend, Shelley Blanton-Stroud's, backyard. The discussion at one point led to figs...and me going into a silly dissertation about how seductive the fig is...and how it was probably not an apple at all that Eve was tempted by, but a fig! Then Annie introduced the possibility of a pomegranate being Eve's demise...and on it went...




The True Story of Eve’s Seduction

On a summer patio
after several chilled servings
of grapefruit juice and vodka
glasses sweating in the valley heat
conversation turns to DH Lawrence
eases into figs and Women in Love
how luscious and exquisite the fig’s fruit
guarded in soft, purple casing .

Many insist it was an apple
suspended innocently
prompting Eve
to reach
and pull
and commit the historical misfortune.

This red orb of crisp flesh
is fodder for fairy tales but not well suited
for Eve’s first fall into humanity.

Yet, the soft seductive fig skin
velvet cloak of purple darkness
splits at the seams
thick with sweetness
the sugary reward
secret seeds of mystery.

Another cocktail, another prediction.
Surely a pomegranate is equally alluring
rich scarlet pods, captured inside
a thin smooth skin of hope.
Definitely this triggered
Eve’s lust and longing
for eternal perfection.

It is not coincidence
sharing this conversation,
all of us women
all of us familiar with the forbidden.