Wound around a branch of Knowledge,
Eden’s first Ivory Tower—
his Professor to her Co-ed
(a word that God would never use)—
dappled light on his greying temples
(she thought older snakes distinguished),
Daddy / Lover, he seduced her
with his apple-polished voice,
James Earl Jones’s timbre, vowels.

Adam’s attentions had begun
to seem, you know, routine to her—

Your hair, a waterfall of silk.
Your eyes, bright planets in the sky.
Your lips, two birds of paradise.
Your breasts, fauns playing in a field.
Your skin, a violet’s velvet leaf.
The valley that runs between the hills—
Quoniam tu solus Sanctus!*
My Newfoundland! My loved Because!

She loved him, too. But he’d been saying
soppy things like that for days.
And the Serpent admired her for her intellect.

*For you are the only Holy One, from the Gloria; Chaucer’s Wife of Bath uses quoniam (meaning for, because) as a euphemism for pudendum.