[Poem – As Reading the Bible]

When the first dawn finished its long climb over the newborn world, God rested— not in weariness, but in wonder. Creation stood before Him like a child taking its first breath.

And from that holy stillness God shaped a garden— a quiet place, a place of beginning, a place where the Eternal could walk slowly among trees that had never known wind.

He planted the garden with His own hands, hands older than time, hands gentle enough to lift dust and call it life. Every leaf carried a small shimmer of His breath.

In the center He placed two trees— one of life, one of knowing— not as traps, but as invitations to trust, to wonder, to walk with Him as a tenelach, a soul‑friend.

Then God formed a human being from the earth— not from stone, not from fire, but from the soft soil that remembers rain. He breathed into the dust, and the dust awakened as a living soul.

The man opened his eyes and saw God not as thunder, not as distant power, but as Presence— near enough to touch the heart without touching the skin.

God placed him in the garden not as a ruler, but as a worker, a caretaker, a craftsman of creation. For even in Eden, labor was a blessing— the first prayer offered by human hands.

“Begin,” God said. And the man began— naming creatures, watering soil, learning the quiet language of leaves and rivers. He discovered that tending the world was a way of tending his own soul.

But God saw that solitude is too heavy for a single heart. Even in paradise, a human being needs another human being to share the trembling beauty of existence.

So God shaped a companion— not from the earth, but from the man’s own side, so they would remember that they belonged to one another. She rose like dawn from his sleep, and he knew her as bone of his bone, breath of his breath, heart of his heart.

Together they walked through the garden, two souls learning how to be human, how to be alive, how to be with God as tenelach— friends of the Eternal who listened for His footsteps in the evening wind.

They worked. They rested. They loved. They wondered. They learned the holiness of ordinary days.

And God watched them with quiet joy, for creation was not complete until two human hearts learned to walk together beneath the enormous sky.

This is Genesis Two in the language of my soul— a story of beginnings, of companionship, of labor as prayer, of love as revelation, of God walking slowly beside His children in the cool of the day.

This is the song of my soul. This is my way of being with God— as a tenelach, a quiet companion with aging hands and an open heart.

• Tenelach (Irish) — a state of deep and mysterious communion with wind, water, trees, and the whole earth, in which a person can truly hear the song of the land. [Literal meaning] “A profound spiritual connection with nature.”