The Sea That Is Still There Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Chicken noodle soup in a thermos
Made me sick in preschool
On some fieldtrip in Palm Beach, FL—
There are things I remember,
But not your love—
How it crept like a sleep at naptime
Through the heavy sherbet rug of'
Kindergarten
Where things startled me that I stole,
Pissing my pants waking up from
The dreams of tree frogs and ant lions—
There were toads in the rebar around
The carport where my mother
Slept in the rain—
And blue pornography across the street in
Graveyard of drunken cars:
And the soft dunes where the conquistadors
Slept—
And soft boys, no longer running away—
And the sea that is still there
Saying the same name that I always wished to know.