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

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 ...

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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…

Grieving came from leaving Eden But leaving Eden was not grief— It was a lesson in lessening— How things, diminishing, Become more precious.