Midway On The Journey Through My Only Life

Midway on the journey through my only life I find myself re-reading Genesis 2:25 About the nakedness of Adam and his wife Where I am struck with the significance of shame : How with this one feeling all their many troubles came . And I've been hoping, but apparently in vain, That those parts of the passage that are plain Are powerful enough those others to explain For the serpent sounds persuasive to my ear : "If God knows everything then there is nothing to fear." Sounds like a true philosopher to me ! What makes no sense is that forbidden tree Which brought our death to life and made our lives unfree . When husband and wife had merely chosen one another, Over and above their Father ; Was Genesis 2:24 therefore just blather ? It seems the author may have been confused : Where a metaphor was not misused It was embellished, mixed, and fused As if to dignify or to obscure its much too simple gist And to enable the spirit of the teaching to be missed . The tree of which we speak is not that of the Botanist It is a thing which grows as much as towards light Away from it also and out of sight . I gather from the story just this mustard bit : Between the inner and the outer occured somehow a split And human plight has been the foremost consequence of it .