The Beautiful Distances Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There is some kind of river that we share
With our bodies sweating,
Heads pounding around a Ferris Wheel we both
Rode at different times,
Whose light housing apex showed the major arties
Of our loneliness,
And I wanted to put my hands around the Faberge
Of her ghost and point into some strange distance
At my mother and father,
Being traded from Indian to Indian, further west,
And eating the echinopsis of different cacti all of the time,
And to feel secure in showing her my most loneliest of things-
To go down afterwards, attracted to the false lights,
Like sailors drowning into a stoodup heaven:
To win her prizes that meant nothing, and to take her
About in the motions of the sea, with the beautiful distances lit up all around
Us, and no one knowing our names.

-Alma