Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.

Because I saw it happen I knew
she was not hurt, and yet
a child’s blood so red
it stops a father’s heart.

My daughter cried her tears;
I held some ice
against her lip.
That was the end of it.

Round and round: bow and kiss.
I try to teach her caution;
she tries to teach me risk.


From The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2002).
Used with the author’s permission.


 
 

Gregory Orr was born in Albany, New York and earned degrees from Antioch College and Columbia University. Author of eleven books of poetry, three books of criticism, and a memoir, The Blessing, named by Publisher's Weekly as one of the fifty best nonfiction books published in 2002, Greg has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Founder of the MFA Program in Writing at the University of Virginia, he teaches there and lives with his wife, painter Trisha Orr, in Charlottesville, Virginia.