The Garden

 The creation story says on the sixth day

the beasts of the field were made, after their kind,

and with them, in His own likeness, to rule

over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky

and the earth, was man made, and woman, 

from dust and bone, and behold, it was good,

a good day creating; and he built for them

a garden, a thing of beauty, a joy forever, charging

them to cultivate it and keep it, and naked and unashamed,

they did, cultivating and flourishing themselves, equally.

Today, the garden lies in ruin and waste, gone 

fallow, over-harvested, dry and unfruitful, scorched 

and burned, torn down, turned under to plant 

instead riches for men to hoard, claiming now dominion

over each other, other men, as animals herded and

vegetation cut down to harvest, to feed not ourselves

but the fat among us; in time, the earth responds in famine

and drought and fire, plagues and pestilence, and our cries

fall on deaf ears as the earth, this garden, reclaims itself, fighting

back, and we again, like Adam and Eve, are cast out and banished,

cursed once again, scrabbling for ourselves, yet tasting perhaps

the tree of life’s sweet fruit and setting ourselves up

as gods, forgetting now as then, who we are, why we are.

Shall we ever learn the art of love and life and balance,

cultivating the garden of the world as we once were charged,

cultivating and flourishing, equally, returning again to Eden’s garden?