the sunday picnic*

Mother Eden,
now fossil and bone.
Rocks and thorns
now make our home.

Mother Eden.
Uteral dream.
Lost in birth
and born unclean.

We cannot go back.
She was never there.
Secrets are spoiled
but are never shared.

So we roll and toil.
We toil and roll.
The big fish eat the little fish.
On and on we go.

It is here the land
belongs to the dead.
Shuffled feet whisper.
Shadows hang off heads.

There's no slow panic.
There's no racing hearts.
There's only sunday picnics
and the late starts.

So we wander and wonder,
as we make monkeys into men,
we wander and wonder
what that makes us then.

We wander and wonder
who the maker really is then.

We wander and wonder
who our mother really is then.



* Big Fish Eat Little Fish, painted by Pieter Bruegel.