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Gregory Orr

Gregory Orr

To Notice

In Eden, Adam
Had been so busy
Making up smug
Nouns of dominion,
He hadn’t watched
What each beast
And bird was up to.
 
Now he had time
To study them
And saw they wanted
The few, same things:
Peace and quiet for most;
For others, a piece
Of food to pursue
Then a shady place
To rest
And chew it over.
 
Adam chewed it over,
Thought it through—
It dawned on him
That outside Eden
They were eaters or eaten.

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Altre opere di Gregory Orr...
Trauma (Storm)

Hunkered down, nerve-numb, in the carnal hut, the cave of self, while outside a storm rages.
To Name

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

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…
Departure

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

How beautiful they were, Adam thought— These beasts and birds; These tall grasses And flowering trees.
To Noun

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



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