Adam and Eve: Two Sonnets

E. D. Watson

April 11, 2021

Adam

Back then, I could pronounce beasts’ names, the ones

They called themselves, each one different.

We shared the ground beneath a single sun;

I had nothing for to be repentant.

This loss, of all things, most grieves my conscience:

With my first taste of flesh, I was transformed.

My ears closed up, and I lost the nuance

Of animal speech, and the voice inside storms.

Now, the high-lonesome wind just sounds forlorn

And I’ve forgotten the words to the birds’ songs.

My woman mostly looks at me in scorn,

Between us a distance many sighs long. 

Sometimes I think I almost understand

The ragged sparrow who still finds my hand.

Eve

My husband was obsessed with gods and names—

“An oak,” he’d say, pointing. He called me Eve. 

From him I learned to sniff for rain

Which was god, he said, as was breeze.

We did in those days just as we pleased,

And met the gods for supper once a week.

Adam milked the goats, I made the cheese;

In time our eyes grew bright, our bellies sleek.

But as the days unspooled I came to think

That there was something crucial we yet lacked

And also lacked the name for such a thing.

Restless, tetchy, I stepped out back

And—Oh!—the sweetness of that forbidden fruit!

To know the thing I was. To learn the truth.

E. D. Watson’s poem, "Psalm for Those Who Die Alone" was featured in the Langdon Review Tejascovido edition. Watson also has poems forthcoming at Mom Egg Review and The Healing Muse.