Once among the dining hall’s

dull hubbubs

and scratchy beige trays,

a classmate pointed out

the leftover orange

cradled slackly at the ready in my hand

and confided

that its skin’s pinpoints of indentation

fall into the same pattern

as the galaxies in space.

I have yet to know

if that’s a God-honest fact

but ever since I have often thought twice

about peeling off the universe

and flinging it aside

without so much

as an astronomical look.

From the poem cycle, "The Ravelling Back Into the Text of Her Genesis: A Woman's Way Home to the Divine Feminine," to be presented this December at the 1999 Parliament of the World's Religions in Cape Town, South Africa.

Copyright 1999 Mary Krane Derr. All rights, including electronic rights, reserved.

[Another poem by Mary Beth Krane Derr]

[More poems by alumnae]