Tree of Knowledge

This is what happens when you start making up your own mind:

the tree drops its tantalizing fruit, sheds its leaves, & the woodlot shrinks around it

until it stands alone in a line of fence posts & telephone poles, trembling neurons sifting the wind for sparrows.

You become as gods, endlessly bifurcating, simple as stinkhorns.

In place of paradise there’s a field, a pasture, a dishy blankness of sky.