The garden goes to seed while Eve searches

Christian Century, July 14, 1999 by Helen Marie Casie

   Like tumbleweed restless in the hollow morning
   I provoke the dusty trails, calling
   calling your names. Fruit falls,
   ripening into fly-bait, and the corn grows limp.
   No one brings water. No one answers.
   Cicadas murmur and the ground heaves.
   Blood-red roses wither.
   I see the worms taste the acrid soil
   and all the while
   I hear the clang of banging gates.