Independence Day, 2006
          and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil
                                                   Genesis 3:5

Griffin and Sabine write to one another. 
Nothing much is accomplished by the pill. 
Who could blame Icarus for wanting 
to bite the red apple of the sun? It was hotter 
than the firecracker I held in my hand 
those fourths when we guzzled our father’s 
Rolling Rocks. I’d meet you in the woods,
my house, distant and blurred. The froth 
from those beers sat on our lips like passion. 
I got home before the searing balls of fire 
exploded in my father’s eyes and I plucked 
the last subtle feather from your wing.
We careened towards a hungry ocean. 

It snowed in Trenton the day we ended it. 
Blustery puffs of air tugged your trousers, 
reminding you what we had done as you
waited for me in the park. The forest
behind my house was slippery from clots 
of snow off branches. On the car ride home, 
you soothed me with myths about angels 
and lost men with tattered wings. I watched
the snow become rivers that would send me out 
of my home town and east into the silent city
where people talk around forbidden words. 

Later, I addressed you as the first and the last
man in Paradise. You blurred into half a dozen 
others, all carved like green men in the hollow 
of the tree. Now as I take my walk and wonder
where we’ve gone, the light through leaves
cuts a slant that promised so much more. 

Adam, I whisper, what were we thinking?