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This poem takes as its title
a verse from the Bible,

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"I Have Been a Stranger
in a Strange Land,"

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and has an epigraph
from Emily Dickinson,

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"life's spell is so
exquisite, everything

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conspires to break it."

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And Eve is speaking, in this.

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"It wasn't bliss.

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What was bliss but
the ordinary life?

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She'd spend hours in patter,
moving through whole days

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touching, sniffing, tasting--

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exquisite housekeeping
in a charmed world.

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And yet there was always more
of the same, all that happiness,

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the aimless Being There.

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So she wandered for a
while, bush to arbor,

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lingered to look through
a pond's restive mirror.

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He was off cataloging
the universe, probably,

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pretending he could
organize what was clearly

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someone else's chaos.

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That's when she found the key--

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that's when she found the
tree, the dark crabbed branches

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bearing up such
speechless bounty,

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she knew without being
told this was forbidden.

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It wasn't a question
of ownership--

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who could lay claim to
such maddening perfection?

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And there was no voice in her
head, no whispered intelligence

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lurking in the leaves--

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just an ache that grew
until she knew she'd

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already lost everything except
desire, the red heft of it

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warming her outstretched palm."

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