"Eden" - Emily Grosholz

Emily Gorsholz was born in 1950 in Philadelphia and is a Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy. She has four children and was the 2011 Elizabeth Mcnulty Wilkinson ‘25 Poetry Chair.

Eden

In Lurid cartoon colors, the big baby 

dinosaur steps backwards under the shadow

 of an approaching tyrannosaurus rex.

"His mommy going to fix it," you remark,

serenely anxious, hoping for the best.

After the big explosion, after the lights

go down inside the house and up the street,

we rush outdoors to find a squirrel stopped

in straws of half-gnawed cable. I explain,

trying to fit the facts, "the squirrel is dead."

No, you explain it otherwise to me. 

"He's sleeping. And his mommy going to come."

Later, when the squirrel has been removed, 

"His mommy fix him," you insist, insisting 

on the right to know what you believe.

The world is truly full of fabulous

great and curious small inhabitants,

and you're the freshly minted, unashamed

Adam in this garden. You preside, 

appreciate, and judge our proper names.

Like God, I brought you here. 

Like God, I seem to be omnipotent,

mostly helpful, sometimes angry as hell.

I fix whatever minor faults arise

with bandaids, batteries, masking tape and pills.

But I am powerless, as you must know,

to chase the serpent sliding in the grass,

or the tall angel with the flaming sword

who scares you when he rises suddenly

behind hte gates of sunset.

This poem about a mother who knows death and her innocent child who does not is told through the perspective of the mother in an serious but frank tone. This tone is achieved by juxtaposing the mother’s complete thoughts with the child’s simplistic, narrow beliefs. It is the theme of the poem that gives rise to the mother’s (and the poem’s) tone. The mother is anguished because she knows the child will one day realize death in its entirety, but also that as a mother, she cannot fix everything. The mother describes the child’s cartoon as lurid, as a baby dinosaur faces its death, whereas the child simply remarks that “His mommy going to fix it”. Later, the child simply will not believe that an electrocuted squirrel is dead, and says that it is only sleeping. The child is referred to as Adam, further emphasizing the enormity of the child’s future fall from innocence. He will realize death in its entirety, and that his mother cannot fix everything. The mother cannot live up to these expectations, and must admit so, creating the serious, frank tone. Throughout the poem, the mother uses straightforward explanations of events, showing her frankness, that she has nothing to hide. In the last two stanzas, she distances herself somewhat from her son by assuming unapologetic speech. She mentions her son’s belief that she is a God. The next stanza, she shatters her son’s beliefs stating that she is powerless. In candidly denying her son’s “worship” of her, she distanced herself from him so that she can be more honest with him about the fact that she can’t protect him from things of biblical proportions, like the devil (the snake) or even the angel that guards the entrance to heaven. All the stanzas of the poem are 5-lined, are of equal length, and have no rhyme scheme. This, along with numerous comma breaks, slows down the reader’s pace adding to and accenting the serious, frank tone.