Wednesday, June 24, 1992

DREAM VESSELS # 24: Temptation FIRST DRAFT

DREAM VESSELS # 24: Temptation FIRST DRAFT
     —From a collage by Marsha Connell

From the trunk of a tall vase, 
the hand of Allah rises, The palm lifelines 
decreed in the wheatfields, tilling patterns, 
and those of water plants. Rice is another culture.
Adam and Eve reach for the hand that will offer the apple.
He wants that knowledge as much as she.

Perhaps it is Inanna’s sacred tree.
Have we cut down the huluppu tree 
because we desired its death? 
because we couldn’t make a place for it 
within our mythology?
And what of the dark sister 
banished to the underworld,  rooted in shadows.

Serpentine patterns in the wheat, calligraphic fields.
A dragonfly, one of the most ancient and primitive of creatures,
circles creatures circles the farmstead.
A trinity of buildings in the isolated green and gold, 
what prompted the farmer to plan his fields in such a manner? 
Surely he was no earth painter.

On the Sistine Chapel, painting his work 
to be seen by the birds, or God alone, Michelangelo 
created women in his own likeness, hermaphroditic 
and masculine. The name of his desire.

The Banyan tree rises, figlike, 
perhaps it is the fruit of knowledge 
not an apple, but a cuckholded fig.

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