Now, Now

The Man from Eden

35 The Man from Eden Pest Control Solutions is crouching in the bushes of the Good Shepherd Cemetery. On his back, the lethal canister, a slim proboscis in his gloved left hand. Humped over in his brown uniform, he looks like an avenging anteater, though it’s not ants he’s after, but the eggs of the Canada Goose, who has exceeded her quota. He does not think about the Cosmic Egg of the Universe, yolk and white of the material world, or this rustic emblem of the Triune God, as he coats each shell with oil and moves on. Outside, a quick anointing; inside, a small setting sun. The Man from Eden steps carefully around the pious increase of Adam who wait, sealed and crated, for the crack of the summoning horn, when they shall emerge perfected; then, stumbling, wet, with still-blind eyes flock sanctified into the New Jerusalem, that deathless town that looks, for all we know, a lot like ours 36 on this ordinary evening—with spiders framed in their rose windows, and the delicate hands of sewer rats fine as El Greco saints’, and, in the soft nimbus of a street lamp, a host of termites, voracious with hosannas. ...