Eclipsed By Enlightenment

Now but a memory,
Hallie launches her arms to the sky.
The man smiles
as he watches her closely,
her tiny frame
reaching heavenwards,
hands clasped in supplication, and yet,
her sinlessness could not save her.

Eyes now open,
the man continues his walk through the forest
when he observes an apple tree and,
hanging from a low branch,
a single iridescent apple,
untouched and unblemished,
as if waiting for him,
so enticingly fragrant
he does not hesitate to take it for his own.
Holding the fruit in his hands,
he examines it with mounting curiosity,
for though the stem is in its accustomed place, the opposite end,
known to fruit fanciers and orchard owners as the calyx,
is situated, not at the opposing end of the stem,
but rather in the middle where a belly button would be,
if apples did indeed have such things as navels.

This must be magic, he thinks, as he bites into the flesh,
tasting flavors reminiscent of caramel and cardamom.
As he swallows the first bite,
Hallie again stands before him,
arms again reaching heavenward,
while behind her galaxies untold wheel across the sky
in a blinding blaze of azure and gold.

The man now divines all the secrets of the cosmos.
Unfathomable awareness washes over him
until he can stand no more and screams, ENOUGH!
And with that his little girl fades from memory,
like the last dying note of a song,
never conceived,
never born,
never loved.

As the man resumes his walk,
eyes wide with wonders now unseen,
he tries to recall something, or someone,
someone he once knew, perhaps,
now adrift in the expanse of his boundless knowing.