The mists enfold her, scarlet overlaid

with gunmetal. She slips through history

teetering on a well-placed heel. She’s played

big parts: Cleopatra’s understudy,

Mata Hari’s double. Now here she is

sashaying her quintessential body

just out of focus. In this ekphrasis

she is the heroine. The Zohar placed

the garden in her: Eve’s dark nemesis,

Adam’s bewitching lover. Man, half-crazed,

seeded a forest to his distant god

braided black bread, broken and displaced.

Lilith adjusts a hairpin, goldenrod

flinching before her as she takes the road.