Daphne & The Dove Tree

"God has granted me more offspring in place of Abel,"

Eve said, "because Cain slew him."

Daphne, shaded daughter, Greek fates ordained
Apollo’s rueful touch would catch up to you.
Plangent envy's plant, divinely disdained,
How victimized you were by love’s ague!

New beauty, green goodness, tragic truth
Each emerges from your soil as foreign
Dove trees do, given wing in mission earth,
Observed as Armand David would Christen:

Virtue's flowering trees, like Abel’s priested gifts,
Extend to God the first born and best kind
Taken from their fields as sweet oblations.

Required, though, was the real thing. God shrifts
Eve’s first branch in first blood of her second -
Emissaries dovetailing into nations.