The Garden of Adam

In the beginning, God hocked a wad of holy spit
into the dust, slushed it around, and rolled out
the sticky mud-man who would soon be me. 

He smushed out limbs, pinched a nose, patted
my head with twigs and leaves, then poked
two eyes and stuck his luminous thumbs into the clay 

of my face to hollow a mouth. His breath
blown into me smoothed grit from my skin
and warmed the muck within. It called to life a garden 

of organs—the bud of my heart began
to beat, and lungs bloomed like roses. I stood
and walked the earth for nine-hundred-thirty 

years until my heart-blossom drooped and my lungs
withered. When the last god-breath puffed
from my mouth, I was returned to melt 

into myself again. To stare up through the web
of roots—some woven in my topsoil, some burrowed
deep, my mud sustaining Eden. And as the fruit 

of generations sprung from my loins
has covered the earth, claimed dominion
and lived like gods, they all return to the mud of me. 

Though they leech me dusty dry and pile their waste
mountains high, though they yank trees from my earthy
beard and shove their thumbs inside my mouth to pry 

secrets of sustenance, I ask them to tread
gently upon me. Someday, their god-breath will
still—and gardens will spring from the mud of their meat.