Self portrait with closed eyes (Poem)

Something new from my meditations on J. Kirk Richards. This one springs from Self Portrait with Closed Eyes. (And, yes, the title is also the first line and vice versa.)

Again: all the usuals---feedback, praise, lurking. Whatever.

* * * *

Self portrait with closed eyes,

like a brumal serpent
listening to Earth

shed her crystalline

skin, slip off her chill
at dawn's seductions

supple as hibernacula

warm with bodies
slendering into instinct

and appetite—Eden's

infinite metaphors
sidled up to God's breast,

areola iron on the tongue,

milk rich from desire's simmer
and slow burn, the flame

set low so not to sear the soul

still this side of vision, lurking
like the mourning dove's

anti-climactic elegies

teasing Eve from her
backwoods mythology

heavy with temptation's

pome and tang and the rasp
of cherubim wings strung like

words along Lucifer's tongue

as he conjures shame from
her constant wound—fig

weeping matins in Eden's half-

light while Adam snores
downwind, only stirs when

she's roused scent enough

to slip into his dreams
as the rib slipped from his side

the morning God stopped by

and found the basket of figs
he'd left last visit

still sitting on the altar,

thrumming with June Bugs
undone in the eating, mad

with the zephyr's rasp

through the scales of the constrictor
stretched at sleeping Adam's side.