To Return Home For Her Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Empty as the way to
The trailer with the horses,
Or the field with
The horses- abbreviating- starting out
Like this,
As from one’s familiar town,
Getting far enough to get
Through Indians
And then through a few bushwhackers-
But eventually distracted:
Maybe, they think,
They will never make love to her again:
Her gold necklace lost
In the knife lips of the palmettos grown
Over the conquistadors
Who laid down there finally in the middle of
The sixteen hundreds:
That was as far as their journey went:
No Disney World,
Not even Pocahontas- and it rattles out,
While some young lover,
Maybe even my muse, waits at the third
Cinder block
Up to the little house on Haverhill, the
Night trilling,
Expectant, and the more insouciant things
Losing themselves on the naked
Trunks of cypress-
The carport as silent as an empty church-
For her husband- or for anyone
To return home for her.