Noah’s Fossils

Can you remind me who came to our wedding?  Who assembled the tents in which we danced, who played flute, who served the meats and all those wines?  Do you remember Tubal-Cain? His name I can never forget: he held this bronze sword above us, the one forged to protect his sister, Naamah.

I don’t know how many years after the wedding it was – that last night on the waters – as you slept I crept up to the deck to watch the moon’s first touch on the tips of the reappearing mountains and I remember kissing the gopher-wood gunnels for they still held the smell of the old forests that were east of Eden.  The following morning our sons, their wives, you and I stepped onto the damp sediment and as we searched for boulders to build our first altar I feared we’d discover the raven, picking at a sodden carcass – a wedding guest or some other acquaintance.

Yesterday morning I tried to teach our grandchildren how to plant seeds but some of them left to dig for fossils.  In the evening I went down to the cellar to taste my wines, I stumbled into an un-swept corner and standing there was the bronze sword. This morning I banished our second son because last night he came into my room as I slept, drunken, without you, and looked on my nakedness.  He understands me now and I am more ashamed than Adam.  Tonight when you kiss him farewell give him the bronze sword of Tubal-Cain, tell him that Naamah bore heroes who did not call upon the name of God, that before the flood we spoke one language and God feared us and cursed us but as for me I tilled the ground quietly and God called it righteousness.

As I slept on deck in that last night on the waters, beneath the moon and the circling raven, I saw the sword stuck into the stern; and every night since then Tubal-Cain’s splintered fingers have clung to the bows of my crowded, bestial dreams.

And yesterday morning I tried to teach our grandchildren how to plant seeds but those of our second son left me to go and search for fossils.

2013