THE WEAVE:

Vesta lays awake

on the Ferry, so she calls

up, Lilitu, “Tell me a Tale

about the Garden,

Dark One.”

Lilith speaks a poem to her,

"ADAM WAS SCARED

of pretty much every germed
life-thing, when I met him.
I grew up in a house where
we ate things off the floor,
if it fell within the Five

-Second-Rule.  We swam in Water
of which we could not see
the bottom.  We trusted the creatures,
just as scared of us, as we were
of them.  I have never, yet,

been nibbled in my home wombs,
-except by leeches, in the beginning,
when there were not yet enough
fish hatched, and eating them off.
When I first met my Homeland,

I was Five.  There was no structure
standing in its fields grown wild.
There was a porter-potty, and
we pitched tents, usually around
the pond.  But over

the years, many have camped, in lots
of little places.  I, too, once made
a specific place to call
my Home, amongst the trees there.
Nature can often be uncomfortable,

but my Daddy was alWays gentle,
when he showed the creatures to me.
Here the fish, there the frog,
"Go ahead, Lili-Bean, you can
pet it."  I was never very good

at catching fish -although
I went through a few periods
where I Loved the act
of casting out, and drawing
back.  I can understand why

my Father uses it, to calm.
We are the same, you see.
I love that place, because
he showed me how to not be
afraid of what grows

within.  It is all that lies
without, I was taught to distrust.
As children, we were allowed
to keep what we could catch.
And pretty much all of us had

a pet frog, snake, or turtle,
at one Time or another.  Mine
was, Mr. Wiggles.  He died
of a disease, that slowly blackened
his body.  I did not keep another

amphibian, after him.
My brother had a python, and 
we would sometimes watch it
eat mice; the Way she killed,
transfixed, uniquely hers.

We ate the deer my Father hunted
by bow and arrow, sitting in tree
-stands, for hours.  My father and I,
we are the same.  I have sat
in all of his perches, taking in

the messages of something as close
to Home as he and I can ever come.
I have carried dead lambs, tearfully
into the Heart of the Forest.
I have heard the coyotes, feasting

on a friend, in the short distance
from my camp, and still I have not
feared them.  It was the symbols,
rising from this Wood
which told me,

"Things must alWays
Change."  Adam asked me,
one Day, as he watched me
swimming, in a reservoir
he was too scared to come

inside of,
"What do you fear?"
"Being raped," I said,
automatically, "That is,
mostly it."

"That's not exactly a Sunny
bedtime story, Lilitu,"
Vesta complains.

"I know, Vesta," Lilith says,
"You called on the Dark
Sister."