by Patricia Nelson

i.
We rarely dream of Eden now.
How the width of the angel slid over us,
slow and horizontal, like a weight on a wire.

How gently the sun came to us,
breathing colors on our skin.

How we moved through the dawn
without want or need.

ii
Our God is cooler now and far away.
We glimpse Him sometimes in the night,
like moonlight where the leaves move.

Our days fill with closer things: birds
that we can kill or stroke with words—fruits
with red or yellow seams that make us thirst.

Now we touch whatever we desire.
First the want and then the knowing
leave their shapes in the wind.

And now we see how we will end.
How the night with its hiss of stars
makes a line around the day.

Patricia Nelson has worked for many years with the group of Neo Modernist poets who gathered around Lawrence Hart and John Hart in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her most recent book, Monster Monologues, was published by Fernwood Press.