.

In Eve’s Footsteps

based on “Genesis 2: Teaching its Truth to
Women” by Kimberly Hartke

“And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to
be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself.
… And the Lord God built the rib which he took
from Adam into a woman: and brought her to
Adam.”  —Genesis 2:18, 22

God said, before He wrote on slabs of stone,
“It is not good for man to be alone.”
From Adam’s rib, He fashioned him a jewel:
A woman helper of his flesh and bone.

The rest is history, taught in Sunday school,
Called cruel by every feministic fool.
The serpent slithers ’round the world to hide
That woman’s made as helper to man’s rule.

Now Kimberly had never been a bride;
Near barren thanks to age, she’d tried and tried.
Her clock wound down as children slipped away
And seminars and sermons gave no guide.

One Sunday morn, a preacher came to say:
“You need to read your Bible every day!”
Her threadbare faith in tatters, she agreed
To cling upon God’s Word and then to pray.

She opened at the front, began to read
That God made every beast and star and seed.
She read the verse here quoted at the start
And saw her spiritual fog recede.

“Is this,” she prayed, “what You would now impart?
Was I created for the home and heart
Of one specific, lonely man out there?
Is this how You decree I play my part?”

She meditated on the verse in prayer
And felt her heart become as light as air,
For Genesis was true, no Aesop fable—
Man’s past, and not “The Tortoise and the Hare!”

Hence Eve was made to bear Cain, Seth, and Abel,
And fill the just-invented kitchen table
With sons and daughters, helping Adam raise
Them all to love and follow God as able.

The spark from God became a roaring blaze
Illuminating modern culture’s ways,
Its families ground between its factories’ gears,
And churches’ neutered preaching, prayer, and praise.

Her pastors all had preached for twenty years
That women find fulfillment in careers
And marriage must distract from serving God,
Thus soothing all those feministic ears.

Our comfort from our Shepherd’s staff and rod
And membership within His holy squad,
They said, should give us all our happiness,
And seeking marriage would at best be odd.

This heresy served only to depress
And never let her wear a wedding dress,
As did her seeking for a man to be
Her helper in her corporate-throne success.

She prayed that God would finally help her flee
Misogynistic feminists’ decree
To serve a distant boss and swing an axe
And chop the roots of every family tree.

She could admit the truth and then relax:
She did not wish to own big dollar stacks,
But only cared with children to enrich
And give a man the female help he lacks.

She flipped her just-discovered mental switch:
Instead of her career making her rich,
She’d work from home, for no one else on earth
Except the man to whom herself she’d hitch.

She married soon; the job of greatest worth
Became hers in conceiving, giving birth,
Her fondest wish fulfilled in dividends
From treasures in God’s Word all may unearth.

This isn’t where our marriage story ends,
For Kimberly helped many hurting friends
In storm-wrecked marriages and singles spurned
With what she’d found, with God to make amends.

As long as she still breathed, she always burned
To share the truth that in God’s light she learned.
The women welcomed words they’d longed to hear;
To her delight, their mental switches turned.

Jane sold her business, married in a year,
And Abigail would scale back her career
To homeschool any children; soon she’d marry,
And Celia soon became a man’s most dear.

Sue left her desk job in the military.
Career-bound women made her guy friend wary,
But soon they fell in love with one another,
And now she helps him farm his beef and dairy.

More single women felt free not to smother
Ambition towards careers as wife and mother,
And wives could value building up the clan—
No more did they feel less than any other.

For Genesis presents God’s marriage plan:
A woman’s made to love and help her man—
“It is not good for man to be alone.”
So spread this truth as widely as you can!

.

.

Rhyming Maxims for Today

“…it is a shame that the rhyming maxim has ceased
to be used much in poetry. The form is excellent for
satiric and comic commentary — concise, direct,
and biting.” —Joseph S. Salemi

I.
The left will honor everyone’s tradition,
But if you’re white, they’ll label yours sedition.

.

II.
A problem with schools that no remedy solves:
You’re sending your children “as lambs among wolves.”

.

III.
When mothers toss their babies to the grave,
There’s nothing left of culture we can save.

.

IV.
The framers of our Constitution
Could not predict our mind pollution.

.

V.
The argument, “Power corrupts,” is so feeble,
For what does it say about “power to the people?”

.

VI.
Martin Luther broke away
From the Catholic Church one day,
Yet was surprised, when on a whim,
His followers broke away from him!

.

VII.
Those liberal slogans can’t be more than chatter
Unless black unborn lives can also matter.

.

VIII.
We Christians need to write while there’s still time,
Before our words are made into a crime.

.

IX.
Put down that phone!  Feel more alive!
Pretend it’s 1995!

.

X.
Never argue with the woke;
You can’t convince such stubborn folk.
Perhaps we’ll better meet our goals
Deciding not to feed the trolls!

.

XI.
Why should God bless America,
Who makes her soldiers fight
For Sodom’s six-striped swastika
That mocks the red and white?

.

XII.
If trumpets’ sounds are proof that someone played them,
Then living things are proof that Someone made them.

.

XIII.
I write what people need to hear—
I’d starve if this were my career!

.

.

Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives near Austin, Texas.  His poetry has been published in Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, Atop the Cliffs, Verse Virtual, and The Asahi Haikuist Network, and his short fiction has been published in Nanoism.”

NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.


Trending now:

19 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I am in consonance with your theology related to men and women. Each of your couplets is a pithy direct hit and resonates. Great stuff. I also have the same sense about not counting on poetry to get oneself out of poverty and starvation!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Roy, glad to hear that you agree with the Biblical view of men and women! Sadly, it’s true that people will pay for what they want, but not for what they need.

      Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    Joshua, I love the “Rhyming Maxims,” and I’m very glad that my words provoked them. I hope this encourages others to write similar pithy couplets and quatrains. I especially like numbers I, VI, and XI.

    When the form is used for political satire and comment, it is the verbal equivalent of the “memes” that are so popular and potent today.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Joe. I also hope this encourages others to write these. Let’s write rhyming, metrical text memes and flood the Internet with them!

      Reply
  3. Cynthia Erlandson

    I like both of these poems very much, Joshua. I think it’s great that you are able to write on a subject that many would consider not to be a poetic topic (perhaps in the propaganda or pedagogy category instead). You approach these topics with poetic elements like metaphor (“And chop the roots of every family tree.”) and a lovely and intriguing rhyme scheme, which serve to help make the “point” of the poem believably beautiful.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Cynthia. This one took months to figure out how to write in a good, poetic form. When I read how many of Kimberly’s friends’ lives were changed by the idea, I knew I had to write it and help spread it further.

      The form is called “interlocking rubaiyat,” the same form used in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost (one of my major influences). If you’re interested: https://classicalpoets.org/2016/11/02/how-to-write-a-rubaiyat-with-examples/

      Reply
  4. Margaret Coats

    “In Eve’s Footsteps” is a well versified presentation of a divine plan many women and men need to hear or hear again. And you are bold to write and publish it, Josh. However, the idea is well known in homeschooling circles, with consequences not always desirable. I have known a number of girls who profess to accept God’s way gladly, but dig in their heels against educational preparation for their roles. This can happen to boys as well, but girls seem more likely to be impractical and romantic. If they want marriage and not a career, what need is there to finish high school or go to college? Ave Maria University addresses this attitude every year with a lecture to incoming freshmen of both sexes. The role everyone needs to prepare for is the Beatific Vision, the highest form of knowledge. It is certainly best for anyone with homeschooling or helping support a family in the future to gain as much knowledge as possible through education. Not to mention that college is the best time and place these days to find a congenial spouse.

    Very much enjoyed pertinent epigrams as well. Keep them coming!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Margaret. I’m glad you like these.

      However, there is one point where you and I part company: I agree with those girls!

      First, colleges these days, even many “Catholic” ones, are where faith goes to die. So much I “learned” there turned out to be bogus… this was only beneficial because I was a liberal at the time, and I found it helpful to see the system lay its cards out on the table so I could see how bogus it all was. I’m not sure how successful today’s young people are at finding like-minded spouses in college, given that such an environment is not conducive to faith.

      Second, even the best college these days won’t teach a girl how to get her M.R.S.; if anything, they teach a feminist mindset by their very nature. The lecture you describe almost sounds like the pastors Kimberly kept hearing tell her that her desires for a husband and children were idolatrous. Whatever happened to learning these things in the home?

      Third, the wasted years cost these young women some children:
      https://classicalpoets.org/2022/06/17/a-modernization-of-to-his-coy-mistress-by-joshua-c-frank/
      https://classicalpoets.org/2022/07/26/elegy-for-the-child-never-conceived-by-joshua-c-frank/
      https://classicalpoets.org/2022/12/30/poems-against-birth-control-from-joshua-c-frank/

      The Hutterites’ family sizes have been dropping like crazy because they keep marrying later as time goes on. If that is the cost of education, then the cost is too great. Let the women learn domestic skills and the men learn trades.

      One thing I’ve learned over the years is that whatever modern culture believes is a lie. I don’t care if it comes out of a Catholic’s mouth, it’s a lie no matter who repeats it.

      Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Joshua, most so-called “Catholic” colleges and universities today are even more sympathetic to hard left-liberalism than their secular counterparts. This predated the arrival of Antipope Bergoglio, and is the result of two things:

      1) Catholic academia has always had an inferiority complex about itself, and has always wanted to have the same level of public esteem that secular academia has. So as soon as political correctness and multiculturalism and wokeness and feminism became all the rage in mainstream non-Catholic institutions, the Catholic schools followed suit with a vengeance. And copycats are always more extreme than those they copy.

      2) Vatican 2 opened the floodgates in 1961-65 for the inundation of rage and resentment that had been building up in those heterodox Catholic theologians and hierarchy members who had been kept in check prior to that time. And since these theologians and hierarchy members were very closely associated with Catholic schools, they turned them into breeding grounds for idiocy.

      Are there exceptions to this? Of course. But you won’t need too many fingers to count them. Left-liberalism runs through Catholic academia like mold in Gorgonzola.

      Reply
      • Joshua C. Frank

        Ah, yes, the desire for public esteem. So many Christians of all kinds ignore the verse, “Woe to you when men shall bless you: for according to these things did their fathers to the false prophets.” That’s why I start to worry about my judgment when the world accepts anything I think.

  5. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Josh, I would like to thank you for using your poetic skill to speak out on the controversial subject of marriage and motherhood… a taboo topic that has resulted in much angst and debate over the years. Motherhood has long been frowned upon as a menial role. ‘In Eve’s Footsteps’ offers young women a much-needed alternative viewpoint, a viewpoint that may benefit future generations in an age that has scant respect for children or their parents.

    I love ‘Rhyming Maxims’ for today, especially number IX: “Put down that phone! Feel more alive! / Pretend it’s 1995!”… I am sorry to say, the Nokia Snake game bit me in 1997… I spent precious poetry-writing time with that serpent! I regret every wasted minute!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Susan! It’s precisely because it’s a much-needed alternative viewpoint that I wrote it. Having a devoted mother myself, I can’t begin to describe how important that is! Hopefully the poems I write help with that…

      As for the Snake game, you would think humanity would have learned its lesson with snakes, not to mention apples (ever thought about why the Apple logo has a bite taken out of it?).

      If you regret the time wasted with the Snake game, imagine how much these women must regret wasting time pursuing careers instead of husbands!

      Reply
  6. Brian A. Yapko

    Good work, Josh — fine poetry which presents a strong narrative and a thought-provoking message. I also very much enjoyed the maxims. They are full of keen observations.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, C.B. The idea was inspired by your rhyming maxims, so I hoped you’d like them!

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.