Today’s resource was the online journal, Ekphrastic Review, which chooses a different painting each week and invites readers to submit their own creative responses in the form of poetry or prose. (Last August, they published a short story I wrote, inspired by the painting ‘Frenzy’ by the Polish artist Wladyslaw Podkowinski.) The prompt for today was Heironymous Bosch’s famous (and bizarre) triptych, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ and we were asked to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from the painting. (If you’re not familiar with it, google it.) I chose to write about Adam, shortly after the Creator has presented him with Eve (seen in the left hand panel of the triptych), and so I’ve called my poem,

Adam Finds His Earthly Delight

It seems that, as I slept,

My ribs were counted

And one of them deemed fit for transposition:

That solitary bone – just one of many –

Took on flesh

And warmth

And softness.

*

She sits here now,

Her voice a laughing river,

Her eyes two stars,

Her form an unknown country

With hills and mounds

And secret hiding places.

*

Her hand in mine,

We walk this world together;

My skin on hers,

We rise and fall together.

*

Flesh of my flesh;

Bone of my bone:

Without me, she would have no life,

But I cannot live without her.