Putting on the Ritz, by Blake Leland

Painting by Lorenzo Scott (USA) contemporary. Author's collection. Photo provided of the author.

Putting on the Ritz
 
We are looking at a painting of Adam and Eve. She has an apple in her hand.
Holding it towards him, or taking it back? Can we tell?
Well, there are the tangled garlands they've strung
Around their loins, dark leaves the same as those
On the forbidden tree the artist has painted in
Just behind them and to their left.  They must be then
About to step out together, through days of sweat
And labor, into the long night of things that will, like stars, turn
And turn.  So she is offering the apple
For the second time at least.  And he is, once again, about to break its
Crisp skin, to taste again its sharp, sweet flesh.
They are lost now.  They have fallen, the man and the woman.
The garden’s indifferent bliss gone.  They will live now
Making promises to each other, and will keep some.
The voice in the sky will invent new rules.  They will die.
Meanwhile, every now and then, they dress for the evening
In green rags of paradise.

Blake Leland
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Blake Leland is a teacher at Georgia Tech, a Pushcart nominee who has published in Epoch, The New Yorker, Poetry International online and a few more places. He thought once he might be a painter but now expresses that impulse in poems in which he tries to bring together vision, music, thought and feeling.