After Eden

She wept with him when she dreamed him back from

the colossal desert he wanders alone.
she keeps dropping herself there,
Desperate to understand him as a fresh clay edge
Or, silent temple of many pains he was born becoming.

These days, he says,
she is only ever sad-shouldered and looking down to the right
And it takes labor
To have any reverence for her,

To take her into the crook of an arm
To collapse her into the bottom of it, while a certain
Sorry breeds eternally in her eyes-

The only light left on in the room.
His muscle-woven arm brought straight down to carry the weight

And she is running a criminal hand
Up the bare trunk of him asking something,
Hum-singing unborn psalm into his hair

Of a gradual love that deserves us,
Of a coming time when sons are brought out of her holler and groan,
Of the length of an unraveling already conceived.

He presses his palms into her upper back, obliging and
Listening, listening to her stray young heart bringing up the past
With bitter knocking and many thieved riches.