ross tugade
An Ode To The Ground
How many times do poets have to write about Newton’s apple falling from the tree?
Perhaps not as much as the fruit that Adam and Eve consumed in the garden. We were told
when we were young that the tree which grew in the center of paradise bore apples.
If Genesis told the truth, then fruits—themselves vessels of life—
accidentally told us the secrets of the universe, twice.
The Fall, they called it: how humanity would learn of suffering.
In pain you shall bring forth children. In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life.
Gravity, too, is the law that governs falling objects. Bodies that crash become fractured.
From our inheritance of pain comes the consequences of falling. Who is this God
so adamant in teaching us the tenderness of an ache? But maybe we are better off here:
we would burn away from flying.
Ross Tugade is a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer from the Philippines. She spends her days doing human rights work and, at night, reads or writes to escape Manila’s reality. This is her first non-academic, non-essay published work.