Lady Eve

A Daughter Of Eve by Christina Rossetti

A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.


My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.


Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:--
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.

Lady Eve

78 Record Cover, yarn and other treasures, mosaic on wooden shadow box

2007

A colleague and friend found solace in this piece, calling it Lady Eve.  I find that endearing after teaching at the college level and discovering that most of my adolescent male students blamed Eve for the downfall of humanity.  I remember reading an intriguing thought that Eve gave mankind a gift by giving us the opportunity to be human. 

An Excerpt from The Daimon:

          “For your penance, say three Our Fathers and two Hail Marys.”

          Little Elisabeth listened attentively to Father Karney give the standard reply for confessing that she had disobeyed or sassed her mother—a much different sin from that of her ancestor.  Elisabeth had been nick-named Snotty Snodgrass by her brother, Joseph, for a combination of reasons. Momma had slapped her face once (it only took once) for being snotty.   And then of course there was her incessant runny nose and Joseph loved to terrorize his baby sister.  It was as if he thought it was his job to toughen her up and make her stand up for herself.  Father Candy Corn, as the boys and girls called him when he wasn’t present--because they loved him so, chided them for confessing sins that sounded trite.  Elisabeth, in keeping with her nickname, repeatedly “confessed” being snotty. 

          Guilt.  That’s what had driven Johann, Elisabeth’s Great, Great, Great, Great Grandpa, to confess his sins.  The war of seven years had finally ended and he had come home to find his wife had died, buried in an unmarked grave.

          “Why, she left this world shortly after you returned to the war.”  The townspeople gave recollections of several years back.  Johann learned from the villagers that she had died during childbirth leaving behind a child cursed with the sign of a beast.   

          “How could it have lived?” Johann flashed back to his bearlike rage that had taken only moments to plunge his soul to the depths of hell.  He dropped to the mound of dirt, convulsing with the shocking reality of his sins. 

            Fortnights came and went as Johann slumbered, tossing and turning, in and out of a nightmare trance, entangled within the psyche of guilt-ridden grief.  Folks, who passed by the burial ground, nodded and whispered of lamias, while envisioning the serpent tailed sirens reaching up through the earth, ensnaring a lost soul.