Lloyd Alexander’s Unapologetically Forgotten Relative Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I am touching on you
The places you cannot feel.
When you look up,
It is only coincidence,
Because I do not know who you are.
Instead,
You turn to the liars you believe in,
The men in your life
In coincidences of flesh
They pollinate you steadily,
When I am lost in the park down the
Way, my voice gone
From crying your name,
Though the old great author is dead,
I write to him about you in real life,
When you are far away
You remember nothing of our
Casual lives apart together,
Departing the way secret relatives
Say goodbye at the airport.
Your eyes reveal someone I have
Never seen,
Though soon all the world is waking
Up and donning their body’s work.
This is when you close your eyes and
I cannot wake up without you,
So here I am,
Hoping to make friends by
Humming a fragmented song,
Because the greatest men have already past,
And I cannot go after them until,
Because the rules say they
Will not let me in,
Though if you put on your robe
And step out onto the sunlit balcony,
Yawn and drink a glass of milk,
I will climb up to you and sing,
For as long as I can hold on.
If they see I have tried hard enough
To appeal to the unfamiliar muse,
My adopted fathers will seize up
And patiently wait upon the fading paths
For me to follow into the
After hour's dusky writing room.