Second Nature

(after reading Wild At Heart)

the first nature came to Eve

when she was fifteen. the call
to feel arms wrapped in
a downward vine motion, curled
from just below her raised grasp to her wanting
hips, the most barren part of her. Screaming
in the sincerity of life, of not being,
of fulfilling her, the HER
that cannot be
without another.

first nature failed
in its continuous promise,
taking what she could not give
because it wasn’t hers to give:
affirmation of manhood.

Adam, why do you not show your boys
how to be a man? Tell them adventure is life,
and without this adventure
life dies?

second nature became knowledge
when Eve became her own.