Collect for the Feast of St. Tryphine

I miss a devil defeated, or his stand-in—green man, Merino ram, the big bad—hunter-felled
  before a happy ending.
I miss an adapted mystery play, scripted for children, with one nacre promise slipped into each
  program’s fold.
Oh, after a friendly yokel with a felling ax go I—pronouncing, pleading! My voice reaches only
  as far as my teeth,
sound shrunk like the silica blink, the rockgut sand in a pearl, row, strand, a case, in a whole
  damned
string of department stores, tiny like the first lie ever told, like my Louisiana grandmother, the
  veritable same
who broke a bone in her lower back praying, who fished her dead husband from a pool, fought
  every day
the devil, wore pearls, stood straight. Patrons are asked not to lean. Once I was in a jewelry shop
  when caseglass
snapped, that tilting sinner jumped so high you wouldn’t believe. I was in there the other day,
  crack still
threatened by a printout, a stick figure bending, red slash right through him. That Wilderness is
  willing to tolerate dominion,
that all this is for you, dim Adam, or that I’ll love unconditionally: any of these might have been
  the first lie.
I’ve been thinking of Bluebeard’s closed room, absent treasure cases or compassion, of the story
  of Tryphine,
blueprint for the beard, where the sainted bride discovers her host’s unimaginable secret, is saved
  by family or escapes solo,
depending on the version of the telling. The story is essentially Eden. How high did you jump
  when you first swallowed
what God was capable of? That some blade-toting cousin isn’t enough when the call comes from
  inside the garden?