It wasn’t bliss
What was bliss but the ordinary life?
She’d spend hours in patter,
Moving through whole days
Touching, sniffing, tasting, exquisite
Housekeeping in a charmed world
And yet there was always more of the same,
All the happiness,
The aimless being there
So she wondered for a while,
Bush to arbour,
Lingered to look through a
Pond’s restive mirror

He was off cataloguing the universe, probably,
Pretending he could organize what was clearly some else’s chaos
That’s when she found the tree
The dark, crabbed branches
Bearing up such speechless bounty,
She knew without being told
This was forbidden
It wasn’t a question of ownership
Who could lay claim to such maddening perfection?
And there was no voice in her head,
No whispered intelligence lurking in the leaves
Just an ache that grew
Until she knew she’d already
Lost everything
Except desire, the red heft of it
Warming her outstretched palm