[And isn’t everything risk?]
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.
“‘[And isn’t everything risk?]’ is from the sequence ‘Sixteen Sort-of Sonnets in Old Age’ (I turned seventy-nine last week) from my new collection We Interrupt this Broadcast, which will be published by W. W. Norton in June of this year, 2026. ‘Sort-of sonnets’ is a term I use for a poem of fourteen (by my count) free verse lines. The short lines let me highlight sounds or words (as in the hedge/ledge rhyme that concludes this poem). I think of this as an ‘existential lyric’ on one of my central themes: the primordial power of lyric/song to ‘resurrect’ a lost beloved and thus transform grief and loss into the intensified affirmation that a poem is.”
—Gregory Orr
Gregory Orr
The author of numerous collections of poetry, Gregory Orr is considered by many to be a master of short, lyric free verse.