Classic Poem

I wanted to heal the hurt place
where she had pierced her ear lobe
to hang a wheel of Spanish gold—
fake, maybe, but no less ornate.

And no less deep, the cicatrice:
clean through; a small but ugly ob-
lation of blood I wasn't called
to taste nor to commiserate.

She couldn't wait any longer, then,
at eighteen, for that child's-flesh of
hers to be interrupted so—
for the vanity's or the pain's sake?

How many hours in Eden,
I wonder, before poor perfect Eve
admired underneath their dark bough
the gilded circles of the snake?











By permission of the author.