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

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

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

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

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…

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

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…

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 ...

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.

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

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

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