When mother Eve took the first apple down

from the tree that grew where nature's heart had been

and came tumbling, circling, rosy, into sin,

which goddesses were lost, and which were found?

What spirals moved in pity and unwound

across our mother's body with the spin

of planets lost for us and all her kin?

What serpents curved their mouths into a frown,

but left their bodies twined in us like threads

that lead us back to her? Her presence warms,

and if I follow closely through the maze,

it is to where her remembered reaching spreads

in branching gifts, it is to her reaching arms

that I reach, as if for something near to praise.

From Eve