Nell S. Jenkins
© 1999

My Little Eve

You sit across this quiet room from me;
your glowing age is barely seventeen,
with more than half a shadowed century
of life that fills the chasm in between
your dreams of now and mine in memory.

You are so sure, in innocent belief.
that nothing yet to come will dim your eyes,
that you will never know the stealthy thief
who steals your bright-winged hopes and tells you lies,
and no shadows wait to shade your heart with grief.

Your Adam walks beside you, hand in hand;
no serpent stirs the dust beside your path.
There is no flaming sword in seraph's hand
to keep you from the garden, and no wrath
of angels at the gates, the terror of a land

you have not seen and never want to know - -
the lumbering, fierce beasts, the mortal pain,
and strange trails where you are afraid to go.
If I could set Earth's ancient clock again
a perfect Eden would begin once more, and so

You would be spared from days that lie ahead.
Lion and lamb would sleep beside your feet.
No sweat would stain your cheek or salt your bread
and you would never feel the cold and heat,
or see the broken ferns where Cain left Abel dead.

I cannot spare you this, my little Eve.
This destiny is yours, as it was mine,
but from bright memories I can still retrieve
the times when ripened grapes on life's strong vine
gave me a part of Eden that I never had to leave.

Nell S. Jenkins
© 1999

First Birthday

Many doors lie closed between
this day of yours and this of mine.
May no sad portal that my feet have found
swing wide to dim the shine
of yet-remembered heaven in your eyes.
For you, so young and wise
with innocence, and innocent of wrong,
there would be sun-filled days
and merry song
of bird and waterfall down all
the ways you go,
if the yearning of my heart
could will it so.