And of the fruit, of the devil, of the knowledge.
 
And he did know her as he saw her
And did, of his own bone, lust
And did, for his own rib, lust.
 
Then, in the shadow of original sin, he fathered
Then, with fleshy fruit yet palate-settled,
 
Then, from banished seed,
Then, among his presence multiplied,
Then, he watched his teeming issue.
 
We, in his fashion, remain cursed voyeurs,
We, tempted by flesh and knowledge, see.
 
We abide in reciprocated spectacle,
We are Cain and Able and deluge,
We are witness to plague and redemption.
 
Watch with the eyes of God, of Pope Peter:
Watch with stone eyes, Galilean eyes watching God. 
 
Watch, digitally, panoptically: snowy prism.
Watch, with power multiplied: exponentially.
Watch time, watches, watchers, watched.
 
Each unto himself, seeking salvation,
Each unto the past, fleeing damnation,
 
Each unto the encroaching soon-yore, nearby:
Each unto his neighbor: distrusting, controlling
Each, making selves Oriental, into adjacent
 
Other.

            But well-enough, nonetheless,
I dilate, and push; the walls of my innards
            Flexing in painful waves.
Otherwise blessed with the gene, the one
            That makes my womb barren,
That makes my womb a myth:
            Nonexistent.
 
And, yet, birth I give, to a bouncing work,
            A perfect: A spirit: A soul.
Conceived from an unrepentant ether,
            Snatched from moments,
Uncounted among progeny, yet living,
            Bravely, fists clenched, and
Page-turning in wrinkled time:
            Omnipresent.
 
Son of Washington and Whitman,
Son of Eliot and Proust,
Son of Plato, Virgil, and Wilde,
Foucault, Melville, and Mann,
And Stein and Woolf,
And Vidal and Navratilova(?),
And Jean-Baptiste,
            And Jesus Christ.
 
Perched between clavicle and crown,
            Gravity-centered higher
Than most might expect for a carnal being,
            For a human being whose lower
Two-thirds might otherwise work, and
            In whose primal needs beauty beats,
I project into a vast and hungry ether:
            Umbilical.
 
Freak, mutant, next in line to the throne,
            New race, or is it species?
Or, is it really next in the long line passed
            From mind to mind, heart to heart,
Along a different path, consummated upon
            Different hips, made for strength,
Different strength, borne of a different womb:
            Momentitious.

            Un-canned and plated, still no one will even touch them.
And a platter just for plump brown giblets, the part of
            The bird that always sat by him, at the table’s head.
 
There will be steadier hands wielding the carving knife—    
            His role having morphed of late to cut supervisor—
Unsupervised, and carving with less brave precision,
            Without his smiles approving hot stolen sample bites.
 
There will be a few extra inches around each seat,
            A little more elbow room for lefties’ flapping wings,
As all scoot out a bit to take up now-barren space,
            His once-hulking presence—then slouched, then wheel-chaired—now gone.
 
There will be less re-told jokes about heaping plates full,
            Fewer appetite-suppressing deviled eggs consumed,
No voice to marvel at his grandchildren’s bottomless guts,
            Less belched out comments about this best-ever cooking.
 
There will be no stories about small town Long Island,
            And fewer proud tales about building, Mickey, Main Streets.
No more hand-split wood brought in from a woodpile out back,
            Stacked—culled—from a felled pine tree in ol’ Miss Bibb’s backyard.
 
There will not be garden-walking to plan next year’s crop,
            There will not be the zinging comment, “I wonder what
The rich folks ate,” prideful, wry: comically ironic;
            No three sneezes signaling a content, full belly.
 
There will be no passing out, nor recliner-snoring
            As the Cowboys play, as cooks and kids clear the table
And fill stacks of Tupperware, and prepare sandwiches
            Of half-timed pulled turkey on perfect home-baked biscuits.
 
But there will be Thanksgiving,
                        It still comes,
            For family and our newly passed
            Patriarch; for our new-sensed past.
But there will be savory victuals
                        More than enough,
            Dripping with gravy and butter
            And in gluttonous portions.
But there will be memories,
                        Each more precious,
            And an empty seat in space,
            And in his honor, just a taste
                        of each of the five pies.