Lesson Learned in His Smiting

Contributor: Sy Roth

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Adam’s second son could no longer lift his head.
The other smote him,
Cracked him upside his head,
Crushed it like a red-ripe watermelon.
Hammered it into the ground with a stone
until its blood puddled on the tilled earth.

He watched life ebb from the other
for the first time ever,
after his own blood cooled.
Callow body reacted in anger,
Supreme being’s fault
having dismissed his offering.
The other would not awaken,
so he left the field
where nothing further could grow.

The first couple mourned the passing.
Amends like dead fish
lay flopping breathless on shore.

Enoch would have to do,
child sprung from a sister’s loins,
lesson learned from action,
and a city constructed on the separation of
right from wrong arises around it.

Nothing exists in a vacuum of inaction.
He proved it.
Lesson learned.


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He comes riding in and then canters out. He resides in Mount Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace. He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in many online publications. One of his poems, Forsaken Man, was selected for Best of 2012 poems in Storm Cycle. Twice selected Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway. He was named Poet of the Month for the month of February in BlogNostics. Included in Poised in Flight anthology. A Murder of Crows named Poem of the Week in Toucan.