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Gregory Orr

Gregory Orr

To Love

Grieving came from leaving Eden
But leaving Eden was not grief—
It was a lesson in lessening—
How things, diminishing,
Become more precious.
 
Water seeps from two hands
Cupped to hold it—
Skin tight against skin
As lips seek it:
That liquid
That is life
And slips
Away.

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Other works by Gregory Orr...
Beggar’s Song

Here’s a seed. Food for a week. Cow skull in the pasture; back room where the brain was: spacious hut for me.
To Choose

God planned a static planet, With plants that bore No offspring—as if Acts had no consequence. But Eve was there to change
To Name

God wanted labels That would stick To fur or bark or leaf. Hadn’t he given Adam A tongue?
Departure

To the trees, leaving Came naturally— A green extension Of their being. But for Adam and Eve
To Notice

In Eden, Adam Had been so busy Making up smug Nouns of dominion, He hadn’t watched
Gathering the Bones Together

The deer carcass hangs from a raft… Wrapped in blankets, a boy keeps w… from a pile of loose hay. Then he… and dreams about a death that is c… Inside him, there are small bones
The Pond

Snapping turtles in the pond eat b… and frogs. They do us no harm when… But early this spring two Canada… lingered, then built a nest. What… heard of, our neighbor feared: gos…
To Noun

Nouns were a giant Confining— Adam felt the sounds He made Build bars around
To Long

How beautiful they were, Adam thought— These beasts and birds; These tall grasses And flowering trees.
Two Lines from the Brothers Grimm

Now we must get up quickly, dress ourselves, and run away. Because it surrounds us, because they are coming with wolves on lea… because I stood just now at the wi…
To Say/To Save

Eve sensed this Was something Words could do In a fallen world: Move a thing’s
Then

My parents and the parents of others were pillars of meat the sky’s blue roof rested on. Around them grew flowers with stalks so thin they bent
On a Highway East of Selma, Alabama

As the sheriff remarked: I had no business being there. He was right, but for the wrong reasons. Among that odd crew of volunteers from the North, I was by far the most inept and least ...
Memorial Day

After our march from the Hudson t… of Cemetery Hill, we Boy Scouts… the sermons and hot sun while Girl… lolled among graves in the maple s… When members of the veterans’ hono…
Self-Portrait at Twenty

I stood inside myself like a dead tree or a tower. I pulled the rope of braided hair and high above me



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