All Eve's Children

It was not meant as exclusionary,
the way the boy
laid his arm along the pew,
not touching her back
but cupping the bowl of his hand
over the girl’s shoulder,
exactly the way
his father encircled his mother
in decorous Sunday embrace.

Near in age and adoring,
his forsaken younger sister
saw the story of all Eve’s children,
an enacted parable of man leaving
father and mother to cling to wife,
heard Scylla and Charybdis’ seductive hymn,
felt the tension of two great loves,
perceived in a piercing moment
ties tighter than the bonds of blood.