How Many Legs I'Ll Have To Lose Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You’ve combed your hair again and I am drinking wine
I bought tonight after I left you at that party in wounded
And high weeded guts of
West Palm Beach: the grapes are from the grandes bodegas
Where the poets rest in the trenches of lime,
And I jogged today after I left you Alma over the waters and
Into the soft terrain of the rich man’s homes,
And they made me smile and think of you, because you are
So beautiful that you could fit into any of those homes and
Make them smaller;
And how you’ve cast your eyes out of buses traveling far
And to the east;
And how you’ve never seen the Wizard of Oz, and I never
Want to have to fire you:
I feel like a torch in a warm dungeon full of booby traps when
I am nearer you:
I feel like a teenager slipping away from school to bask in his
Pastimes of cemeteries which border the teal tennis courts
Where the topless din mothers and their professional sisters play
At ease in their early retirement:
And after I left you I jogged until I stopped to yawn up at the
Soft belly of an airplane: it almost didn’t seem real.
Just as none of this seems real: the monsters that I have to kill for
You are out there but impossible,
And I love you, but the journey is long and the windshields
Have fogged
And I don’t know how many legs I’ll have to lose to win you.