Fault Lines

 

How do we know that a snake tempted Eve

to partake of the fruit there in Eden?

Where we there in the tree like a fly on the wall?

Could we hear what they said?  Did we see them?

Or is it a story passed down through the ages

placing censure each time it’s repeated?

According to speaker the woman is weaker,

a man would not be so defeated.

So the snake is the fall guy replete with forked tongue,

and the woman at fault for just listening,

and the man claims that he wasn’t near the said “tree,”

oh, and surely we see he’s the ‘victim.’

Yet story asunder, I truly do wonder

if woman fell prey to temptation

from the mouth of a man with the tongue of a snake

slyly convincing that she could partake,

no thought to exactly what was at stake

as he whispered his words of seduction.

A woman is made from the rib of a man

compassionate, nurturing, loving and kind

equal in all ways except save in one:

when push comes to shove, then the woman is done–

indicted as guilty before she’d begun

…and so, in a garden, the first man had won,

                            * * * * *

Passed down through the ages, a story conceived:

that a woman, a temptress, cannot be believed;

evermore faulted with stained reputation

to bear blame as the one who gave in to temptation.

© Ginny Brannan 2022