From The Garden Of My Dying Fingertips Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I read over words that shouldn’t have to be real;
I make them come to half-way life as pain
Killers,
As little things which shake fists of animated dust
And twigs toward the sub-stellar night:
Customers drive in and look at the pumpkins,
But the tent isn’t coming until Monday-
I don’t know why I say these things- I think it should
Be better to live near you,
To smell the same mustard seeds
Blown from the clock towers
Of the state university,
Lungs of Furries blowing intelligent pumice:
Walking the same streets as your serviceable gardens,
Looking nearer the same things which shouldn’t have
To make you smile,
Even happening across the men you’re more likely to
Marry:
Now I am so far away down in a dry well of palm trees,
Conquistadors flanged amidst the sharp blue cactus,
Everyone licking his paws from trying to get to it:
And it’s funny that no one down here thinks of you
Anymore in passing-
But here I am, weeping like a little bird, congratulating
The nightmares of rhododendron and sharp toothed
Adversaries,
Tempting them nearer in our reciprocation of insouciant play,
All to have you a little closer,
If not in reality then at least in the jungle kingdom of
Ghosts and fairytales who come crippled and gimped
From the garden of my dying fingertips.