Eden in the Ozarks

by Andrew Careaga

What if God had chosen to put the Garden of Eden

in these Missouri Ozarks. Would Adam and Eve

used sycamore leaves to cover themselves?

Or catalpa leaves, big as catcher’s mitts? Or maybe

the heart-shaped redbud leaves?

These all thrive along the banks of these meandering spring-fed creeks.

If God had put the Garden of Eden

in the Missouri Ozarks, would the serpent

have been a copperhead? A water moccasin?

Would a pawpaw have been the forbidden fruit?

These are my thoughts today,

this first day of autumn.

On the autumnal equinox, everything

hangs in the balance, as it did in Eden of old.

The seasonal seesaw teeters

from warmth toward coolness as I walk

beneath a gray-streaked dome of sky. The sidewalk

damp from overnight rain,

splattered with the fallen leaves

of sycamores, catalpas, redbuds, and the others:

maples, hickories, black oak, white oak,

pin oak, dogwoods, mulberries. Yes,

my feet tread on the colors

of fallen creation, vibrant yet muted

By the wet. Orange leaves tinged

with scarlet or yellow green. Brown

leaves dark as chocolate.

The glories of a passing life.

I also walk along life to come.

Life contained within the dying,

flat, twisted catalpa pods,

the golf ball-sized hickory nuts,

their green shells turning

to shoe polish black.

These vessels hold seeds,

awaiting resurrection.

But God did not choose

to put Eden in the Ozarks.

God chose another place,

on the other side of the world,

where humans walked long before

any saw these ancient time-worn hills

and spider-vein rivulets.

And when humans finally arrived here,

those early sojourners, those banished ones,

did they marvel at the sight of it?

Did they wonder how they traveled so far for so long

to arrive at a place so distant from paradise?

BIO: Andrew Careaga is a writer from Rolla, Missouri, USA, whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Argyle, Flash Fiction Magazine, Frazzled Lit, In Short, Club Plum, MoonLit Getaway, The Orange Rose, Roi Fainéant, Spillwords, Syncopation Literary Magazine, and elsewhere.