Margaret Mackinnon
AT LAST, WHAT EVE UNDERSTOOD
After a 15th century manuscript illumination
Adam is oblivious, crouching down to name
yet another unnamed blade of grass,
while the Serpent Girl, walking still,
approaches Eve and will seem to her
almost like a child-like version of herself:
the same small breasts, lank blonde hair,
the same eager gaze. And perhaps what makes it
all inevitable is the warm breath Eve feels
against her cheek, the words the creature speaks
so clearly: You will now be wise.
And so, Eve puts aside her fear. She eats and learns—
eats and understands—
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you—
by the sweat of your brow—
you are dust and to dust you shall return—
as if all of it were hers to see. But even beyond
the garden’s gate, beauty is never entirely gone.
These things endure: long evening light,
green on the surface of a sea—
a small dark bird flying low over the yellow field—
sun that enters morning’s open door and her husband’s
lovely hand, rough and lined with age.
Of course, she knows failure now. And friendless hours.
But doesn’t time, where she must live, have its gifts?
Memory returns the face of the brother she has lost.
She is like a woman who spends an afternoon with a box
of old photographs, choosing images from years before —
in this one, she is dark-haired, smiling,
posed with her daughter in some sandy spot long past.
And she will say, Yes, I still remember that day.
How warm the sun is on her skin! And how
her own child is forever cradled in her arms,
among those remnants of the garden ever green.
MARGARET MACKINNON is the author of The Invented Child, winner of the Gerald Cable Book Award and the 2014 Literary Award in Poetry from the Library of Virginia. Her second book, Afternoon in Cartago, won the 2021 Richard Snyder Prize and has been published by Ashland Poetry Press. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she leads poetry workshops.