“Mulga Bill’s Bicycle”
January 30, 2011 § 1 Comment
And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden. But you must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.” Genesis 2:16
Twas Adam, on an evening walk, who caught the sinful craze
And turned away the gracious Lord who gave him all his days,
He ambled through the garden next to Eve – his darling wife,
And gobbled down the berries from the yummy tree of life.
But lurking in the shrubb’ry was an adder keen to greet:
It mentioned all the fruits and said “Excuse me, can you eat?”
Well Eve, to whom the question travelled, stumbled to a blunder.
She knew of one forbidden tree, but now she fell to wonder:
Perhaps the Lord (and so the serpent said) had been a lying,
Or never really said the tree’s devourer would be dying.
And so she went to seize its crop without another blinking,
Which raises many questions, such as: what was Adam thinking?
Well scripture doesn’t really say, but still it’s worth a guess,
For men throughout the years would make a very sim’lar mess.
Perhaps he thought “Look here, you snake, from Eden to the sea,
From over there to over here, there’s none around like me.
Obedience for me is but a simple, sweet delight –
Just ask a wild duck can it swim, a glow worm can it light?
I’m very good at being good, as everybody knows,
Although I’m not the one to talk – I hate a man that blows.”
And if he reckoned all of that, the tragedy was this:
The Lord had made him full of goodness, blessedness and bliss,
But did he think he didn’t need the Lord to keep him strong,
That on his own he wouldn’t do the slightest bit of wrong?
Well possibly…for when his wife had bitten, chewed and swallowed,
She handed him a piece and, in a moment, Adam followed!
Twas Adam, then, on Eden’s walk who ate the banned cuisine,
And in his heart began a horrid journey unforeseen,
His soul – it hurtled down a hill inside him to the fray,
And went a dozen yards and bolted dirtily away.
It left the track and took him on a blinding terrored streak,
And whistled down the awful slope and stopped in Dead Man’s Creek.
Twas Adam then, with quite a squawk, who tumbled thus from grace,
And brought the Lord’s displeasure on the human being race,
For though his soul was dead in sin, it lived to make a kid,
And carry on a nature to approve of what he did.
And Adam and his wife began to fight and yell and squabble,
And blame each other often for that first regretful gobble.
And no one ever since has been as good as in the ‘ginning,
For all of us, but one, have been a-constant-ally sinning.
But still the Lord was ready with some mercy for the strife:
He went to tell the couple of a coming human life:
A powerful descendant to assume the fallen flesh,
And crush the crafty serpent and restore the race afresh.
And so the awful consequence of sin began abating,
And with a sigh of thankfulness, a people started waiting…
.
The Banjo Bible 
This poem is based on Genesis 2:15-17 and 3:1-24.