Across The Orchards You Abandoned Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Busy visions of a childhood and her ghosts,
Words that linger in a poor man’s clutch, as she looks
Away perpetually, browns stems quivering over
Her children, but she is out of leaves and warmth-
Sexy vision of catastrophe, how you loved my gifts
Of flea markets for a year, but could not entirely give
Up your sailors of Mexico, and the pretty cannibalisms
You put into your bed across the train tracks at night;
While he still doesn’t satisfy you, you are the personification
Of any soul, but it wouldn’t be right to say your name again,
Not on anyone’s birthday- though I will not be waiting
Anymore like a rabbit in his green hutch or rock garden
In the little yard I remember bordered by rattlesnakes
And aloes- Like the urban legends that exist in the
Highways of gossiping sky: I showed your aunt the hickies
You gave me as we made love for the year that is over;
I gave your sisters and more of your cousins fireworks.
And now I am left counting other butterflies who migrated
Across the orchards you abandoned, while my mother
Falls down in some mock Pieta, a wasp or some power
Cord stinging her foot again with its preschool lavishing,
As she dries the clothes of my childhood underneath a thunderstorm
That is already passing.