Wound around a branch of Knowledge,
Eden’s first Ivory Tower—
his Professor to her Co-ed
(a word that God would never use)—
dappled light on his greying temples
(she thought older snakes distinguished),
Daddy / Lover, he seduced her
with his apple-polished voice,
James Earl Jones’s timbre, vowels.

Adam’s attentions had begun
to seem, you know, routine to her—

Your hair, a waterfall of silk.
Your eyes, bright planets in the sky.
Your lips, two birds of paradise.
Your breasts, fauns playing in a field.
Your skin, a violet’s velvet leaf.
The valley that runs between the hills—
Quoniam tu solus Sanctus!
My Newfoundland! My loved Because!

She loved him, too. But he’d been saying
soppy things like that for days.
And the Serpent admired her for her intellect.

For you are the only Holy One, from the Gloria; Chaucer’s Wife of Bath uses quoniam (meaning for, because) as a euphemism for pudendum.