On Stand of Trees (Poem)

Another from Browns and Rusts. All the feedcrack usuals apply (especially in terms of how the last stanza reads). And, of course, thanks for playing.

* * * *

On Stand of Trees

I've been neglecting what it takes
to piece together dawn from old
snapshots and reminiscence faded
as the blush from Adam's skin

when God's question stunned
the garden and he slipped with Eve into
the shadow of God's voice, their shame
a stand of trees backlit by cherubim

come hounds a-bay to flush them into
death, sin, recognition, solitude,
a blood-drunk field mantle deep with sweat
and sorrow, soil thick with the afterbirth

of myth and tectonic histories, pieces
of a puzzle that shift in bed as I
try to number them one, two, three,
no, one, two... one

edges ragged as the blanket Cain has
carried since Eve weaned him from the teat
and he found his thumb to replace it,
but not enough to fill his hunger, not

enough to keep serpents from burrowing
into his need, from shedding that rag
like yesterday's skin, from slipping him
the switchblade he used to quarter the fruit

he knew had ripened in Mother's womb,
the harvest he'll never find as he works
his spittle and excrement field into bodies
with his hands red as stygian clay.