What we took from the garden

was love, for love is knowledge

and the knowledge of love

is a bitter seed in the belly of a bird.

       Expelled over new lands

the seed falls as love into the soil,

casts out slender roots to grow

and seed and grow again,

carried further and further

     from the garden

in unending chains of fruiting trees.

The trees hold the garden as memory

in a lover’s embrace, as the sun

is sucked by leaves, consumed

     in adoration and exchange.

And age becomes knowledge

becomes love as their trunks swell

over time into rings, and each ring

binds us to the garden because

     what we took from the garden

was love, and love was the garden

and it is the garden that keeps us

breathing each other in

here in the cold land beyond its gates

     as it pumps through our hearts

             like blood.