I had no idea of the depth of my own protective instincts until I moved to California and confronted an invading force of ants bent on carrying off a newly baked apple crisp. Somehow it reminded me of these verses, Genesis 3:22-24, that come after Adam and Eve have eaten of the tree of knowledge: “And the Lord God said, ‘Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!’ So the Lord God banished him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he was taken. He drove the man out, and stationed east of the garden of Eden the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.”
I am not proud of the pleasure I take, blocking
the chink in the grout where the scouts, those master sappers,
tunneled through; perusing the workers’ confusion,
I even pity the dull plodders following
the formic trail, diddling each others’ feelers.
I don’t defend my wrath as I wait for them
to scent the trap, prefer it to the food
left cut and tempting on the kitchen sink.
I do not judge but only begrudge them the fruit.
It’s not hate moving me to bar
their path with boric acid. No, but neither
is it something I want G-d to see.
Maybe this is how the angel felt,
wielding the fiery, ever-turning sword
across the path to Eden, finally glad
to stop those creatures swarming over His apples
so perilously near that other tree
whose fruit would make the mortals one of Us.
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