Bob Hicok
Love Poem
Eve in the Garden of Eden by Henri Rousseau
The woman I love
braids her hair. She’s Eve
and Eve means breathe, to give life,
my wife, from Eva by way
of the Hebrew havah. At dusk
I unlock her hair
from the curves it’s learned.
Overnight it remembers
a simpler life. Come morning,
she misses weaving herself
into a basket. If we had only
this one ritual, I’d still
think the sky of my time
on this planet,
but there’s more. We wake
and kiss and eat and kiss
and talk and kiss and walk
among cedars and grow lines
around our eyes and mouths
and kiss as our sex dries out
and falls down and touch
as if no one were ever evicted
by a snake from bliss, if you
(and I hardly) can believe it.
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