Genesis Tree

In the beginning was no word. 

The earth spun neither evil nor good, 

guilty nor innocent. Words like hope 

and succor and sweetness had no tang to them,

no truth. And out of a cave walks a man 

and with an air of whimsy and delight he names a star. 

Names it after his mother whose grave he decorated. 

A bed of pine needles. Some colorful rags. 

A symbol made of branches and bone 

that would last forever, like her. 

Birth was the first word perhaps.

Birth then death. The first man feels that sorrow, 

that loss like no other. For the first man 

standing above the first dead has no tradition, 

no patrimony. Thus grief has no word. 

A feeling. Standing over that rattle

without reason until the last breath. 

Then the whole world in all its indignities

hangs in the air suspended by some serpent 

god who toys with we mortals and laughs

and delights in it all. No love, no pity. 

How could the man standing in a vast field

of wildflowers trampled underfoot 

not wonder what doom and sorrow lay ahead? 

Lightening. The snickering of angels. 

A haughty coyote cackles in the distance 

and the man wonders what other beasts 

linger suspended in the night. A torch made

of a fallen branch, felled one hopes 

from that same lightening, 

glistening and making lanky shadows

of that one tree I see still. It never dies.