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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.

#AmericanWriters

Other works by Gregory Orr...
To Say/To Save

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

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

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



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