In the Garden

Anglican Theological Review, Winter 1998 by Wallace, Ronald

RONALD WALLACE*

It's just like the Garden of Eden, she said. And it was:

Hollyhocks, bergamot, coneflowers, and her clothes

abloom among the flowering zucchini;

the lush corn tasselling on its stiff stalks;

her underwear like fleshy shreds of peonies;

him standing amazed in his socks.

And they knew only what the wind knows,

a hummingbird delivering the giddy news

of nectar and plenty and ecstatic generation.

What more did they need to know of heaven?

Love thrusting them up, one with the cosmos.

And then the coiled sun turned red and citrus.

Bugs and boredom took their bodies for a host.

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And they were back to normal. Or almost.

Ronald Wallace directs the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and edits the University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series.