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And isn’t everything risk?
The beloved lives
Then dies,
Then (if we’re lucky)
Rises again
Into a poem or song
Or into the world
In some other form
Impossible to predict.
Simplest story, oldest tale:
Sparrows sing it
From every hedge;
And swallows, also,
From their nests on the ledge.
Copyright © 2026 by Gregory Orr. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 16, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
The world seems so palpable
And dense: people and things
And the landscapes
They inhabit or move through.
Words, on the other hand,
Are so abstract—they’re
Made of empty air
Or black scratches on a page
That urge us to utter
Certain sounds.
And us:
Poised in the middle, aware
Of the objects out there
Waiting patiently to be named,
As if the right words
Could save them.
And don’t
They deserve it?I know now the beloved Has no fixed abode, That each body She inhabits Is only a temporary Home. That she Casts off forms As eagerly As lovers shed clothes. I accept that he's Just passing through That flower Or that stone. And yet, it makes Me dizzy— The way he hides In the flow of it, The way she shifts In fluid motions, Becoming other things. I want to stop him— If only briefly. I want to lure her To the surface And catch her In this net of words.
A house just like his mother’s, But made of words. Everything he could remember Inside it: Parrots and a bowl Of peaches, and the bright rug His grandmother wove. Shadows also—mysteries And secrets. Corridors Only ghosts patrol. And did I mention Strawberry jam and toast? Did I mention That everyone he loved Lives there now, In that poem He called “My Mother’s House?”