Titian, “Adam and Eve”
Summer Food Series
I’m currently vacationing in our Maine cottage, perched atop my cousins’ apple farm (Ricker Hill Orchards). As I look out each cottage window, as far as I can see there are orchards filled with McIntoshes, Cortlands, Galas and Macouns. The Garden of Eden springs to mind, prompting me to post the following Lucille Clifton poem about Eve and apples.
Clifton is very playful throughout her Garden of Eden series, which appears in quilting. (The entire series can be read here) Heaven for Clifton represents a stifling morality from which both Satan and Eve are trying to break free. Apples in this drama are symbols of female sensuality.
Do you feel uptight about your body (as Lucille once did)? Let Eve show you how to celebrate it in her version of the fall:
eve’s version
smooth talker
slides into my dreams
and fills them with apple
apple snug as my breast
in the palm of my hand
apple sleek apple sweet
and bright in my mouth
it is your own lush self
you hunger for
he whispers lucifer
honey-tongue.
In another of the poems (“satan understanding at last”), Satan sees this vision of the body as so revolutionary that
if the angels
hear of this
there will be no peace
in heaven
So go ahead: take a bite out of a crisp red juicy apple. Revel in the sight, sound, taste, smell, and texture .
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