The Caesuras Of A Fish Tailed Palm Tree Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This is what I could afford,
This little house, a shell and shelter for my flesh:
I can hear the airplanes leaping above her yellow and
Spanish crown every day,
And even when I am not home,
But at my job and thinking of Alma as I ring up the green onions
And potatoes,
Or whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing:
If I could share a piano seat with her I would even need to
Know how to play,
And then she cut her hair and looked like Snow White;
And I want to take her to Disney World,
And I wonder what she really thinks of me, or how long this
Can last
With the Virgin’s image painted in the cathedrals stained glass,
And the copper cannons sleeping green in their nightmares’
Envy,
And the world spins around, a globe from a glass blowers lips,
Living in Detroit or some other burned out soul
Where cars can last forever
And the sky is an overturned bowl hot and blue where the ghosts
Of the buffalos flew,
And vanished the way the green waters smoke up from my backyard
Window,
And I lie on a cerulean sea, and think of Alma in a pieta in the
Caesuras of a fish tailed palm tree.