That By Her You Should Carry On Poem by Robert Rorabeck

And what troubles you are these things
That make you real, and hungry- The things that
Can never be fulfilled:
How you looked at her out the window, after
The bus was leaving;
And there must have been some birds in the eaves,
In the cypress and the slash pines-
You didn’t even know then how you would
Lose your virginity,
Though you hoped it would be by her, the one time
There was that fire drill and you sat alone
As the children frolicked,
But she left her boyfriend and came over and
Sat and talked with you before your face got old-
Inevitably, there will be lost children,
And bodies left even in the greenest spaces; and
She has forgotten of those times that you can’t
Ever possibly forget, that you will take down with you
Six feet beneath the earth to share your plot with;
And that is what keeps you carrying on this way,
Even after she has long since left off the road,
Settling in a little house beside a river of melting snow,
But maybe sometime upon this same earth you
Will be able to settle down and explain underneath her
Curious eyes, all that she has meant to you,
That by her you should carry on.