from Orpheus and Eurydice

from "Orpheus and Eurydice "

by Gregory Orr

If your gaze takes in the world a person’s a puny thing.   If a person is all you see, the rest falls away and she becomes the world.   But there’s another world into which a person can disappear.   Then what remains? Only your word for her: Eurydice.                                                  *   She paused at the stone gates and saw a story like hers carved there:   the child, Persephone, fleeing the dark god, stumbles.                  A crack appears beneath her feet. Her head’s thrown back, its sunburst of curls a golden chrysanthemum snapped from its stalk.   A mortal’s a blossom the earth opens for.