Excerpt

Eve stood in the middle of the garden,
studying the tree of knowledge.
If she were to prove the snake’s hypothesis,
she needed empirical data.
But alas she had no tools—
No scalpel to dissect the fruit,
no microscope to examine it,
no flasks to analyze its chemical composition.
How else to get a sense of something but to use the senses?
Ripe for the picking, she plucked the fruit off the branch for a closer look
and made the observation “that it was pleasant to the eyes,”²
so “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat,”
and then she handed it to Adam for peer review.
And the results of their double-blind research
were that “the eyes of them both were opened,”
and they saw so much more fruit on many more branches,
and taking one bite only whets the appetite for more
(making a fruit forbidden is what makes it tempting and vice versa,
so that they feed into each other—and even forbidden fruit are fruitful and multiply),
and one sense begat another and one discovery begat another
and the discovery of sense begat the sense of discovery
and lo and behold the sense of all senses and the discovery of all discoveries until
astronomers probing the dust-clouds
in the middle of the galaxy
discover the molecule that gives raspberries their flavor.
And perhaps rather than feeling all-knowing, the scientists
are learning how much they don’t know
and perhaps rather than feeling like a god, they only get a deeper sense of awe
and the taste only feeds the craving for more—
O taste and see, taste and see.