In Full Humanity

In Full Humanity

They were naked and were not ashamed,
pristine, unknowing of the world—
unknowing of themselves, the undertow
to draw them down,
beneath their surface paradise.

For that is what it was,
a crust to hide the deep, the mystery,
the richness of a feast
set forth in royal David's city,
hidden still beneath the tree,
the man and woman unaware,
the linden in the garden
apart from innocence.

A woman and a man,
a crust of ignorance, a tree...
there was a sensitivity to good and evil
waiting for a fall.
There was a hunger for the festive board,
an overlooking of the cost, a restless urging
...and a stable rest.

There was a Galilee—
an infant god, they say,
who would not have them call him good.
Was there a tree, for his undoing?
The wood of faithless fruit?
The wood that touched his blood...
would it be death that sired a homo sapiens?

No, it was life that taught them.
It was the tree from which was plucked
the consciousness of good,
the love which is reality,
the gracious gift of knowing
we may be
all that awareness will allow
in full humanity.
~