Signs of Life after Eden

By Carolyn Marie Rodgers
She might as well have been
              an oven
baking sweet wheat, brown berry bread
            the way we watched her, from
the first moment she told us, we waited
                    and watched,
watched and waited.

Flat.
Like unleavened bread
            she was at first,
until it seemed incredulous, hardly
possible to believe that any
               thing was inside of her
but what is inside us all.

But before too long
       we knew we were wrong.
She swelled.
      She rose up to the occasion
like dawn.
            Like the first beautiful morning
after

the

fall.

Notes:

From A Train Called Judah (Eden Press, 1998). Reproduced with permission of Nina Rodgers Gordon.

This poem is part of the portfolio “Carolyn Marie Rodgers: What Beauty We Now Have” from the October 2022 issue.

Source: Poetry (October 2022)