Like All The Best Stories,

the story of the tree of knowledge decieves,
the better to conceal and retain it's mystery.
In my belief there are older versions
than the tragedy of being expelled
from an infantalising paradise,
where paradise could only be for infants,
and as infants they were bound
to think they were the only ones there.

I imagine the story as told when land
was lightly owned, for being travelled over
by nomads-then the tree was a fig tree
in an oasis where youths who were betrothed
by their parents would given the privacy,
to rest in each other's company.
In the quiet, apart from the group
they would see their future selves.

The shape of the leaf would show
boy himself as a male and the ripe figs
with their gently oozing small hole
at the base ,and the barely concealed
pink flesh inside would show them both
the secrets of the female nature, in which
they would silently wonder. The caravan
would then reform itself and prepare to leave,
calling them to rejoin the communal journey
where time and travel were (once again)
going to take over their lives, changed forever.

The fig tree had done it's work in changing the world
and confirming that the world has never changed.