Dürer’s Eve, by Ed Higgins

Eve, from Adam and Eve, by Albrecht Durer (Germany) 1507

Dürer’s Eve

The consequences follow from here:
the shine of forbidden knowing
the apple soon offered to Adam
the twined Serpent’s hidden fangs 
the omniscient God off elsewhere
the enjoined tree gravid with fruit
the sun’s half-light off reddish-brown hair
the flawless radiant skin
the inviting pursed red lips 
the apple’s crisp ripe roundness 
the knowing unavoidably to come
the pain knowledge will never satisfy
the pose of Eve’s determination
the sinister temptation in her left hand
the arresting essential iconography
the coming expulsion to mortality
the art’s suspended eternal pause
the gentle innocence of her eyes
the dark shadowed forest behind her
the world becoming musky with death
the Divine scheme’s fixity
the what-might-have-been
the Godhead’s complex rebus
the bitten apple later fallen to earth.

Ed Higgins

Ed Higgins’ poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including recently: The Ekphrastic Review, CarpeArte Journal, Under the Basho, and Sum Journal, among others. Ed is Professor Emeritus, English Dept. and Writer-in-Residence at George Fox University. He is also Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. He lives on a small organic farm in Yamhill, OR where he raises a menagerie of animals, including a male whippet, Mr. Toffee, and a rooster named StarTrek.