#AmericanWriters
In Eden, Adam Had been so busy Making up smug Nouns of dominion, He hadn’t watched
I stood inside myself like a dead tree or a tower. I pulled the rope of braided hair and high above me
Eve sensed this Was something Words could do In a fallen world: Move a thing’s
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…
How beautiful they were, Adam thought— These beasts and birds; These tall grasses And flowering trees.
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
To the trees, leaving Came naturally— A green extension Of their being. But for Adam and Eve
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…
Here’s a seed. Food for a week. Cow skull in the pasture; back room where the brain was: spacious hut for me.
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…
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
I felt both pleasure and a shiver as we undressed on the slippery ba… and then plunged into the wild riv… I waded in; she entered as a diver… Watching her pale flanks slice the…
Grieving came from leaving Eden But leaving Eden was not grief— It was a lesson in lessening— How things, diminishing, Become more precious.
Nouns were a giant Confining— Adam felt the sounds He made Build bars around
Hunkered down, nerve-numb, in the carnal hut, the cave of self, while outside a storm rages.
