If You Were Mine To Marry Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have driven past graveyards of 0live and fuchsia:
I have been down to Miami with my father to gather produce,
Before he had his toothache and he wasn’t
Always so angry:
Before I even knew Alma, or her Virgin of Gaudelupe,
While these nights I tend to bow and pray to both,
While her children are glistening with the lactates in their grottos
And the stars are swinging like smoky censers
And I have a house but it is as hollow as a trick of woe begone
Shoes,
Isn’t it Alma: and I drove your aunt and your god mother home today
And I expressed all the things that I desired out of you;
And Meirna wasn’t displeased, and she only said that women needed
Some time for such decisions,
And I hoped and prayed that this was true, and that you might want
Me;
And that you shouldn’t be afraid, because I, Alma, could be your safe
Loci:
My entire body could be your yard for you yawn and tarry and rest with
The alkaline deer, if you were mine to Mary:
The entire world would be a place for sweet an slow moving fish
Who never had anything to worry,
And the snow would water the grass- Alma,
If you were mine to marry.