All But A Child Poem by Robert Rorabeck

And the words are thrown away,
Like tourists over the desert which has your lips-
The buses are greyhounds,
And they take your golden dollars of wishes like
Wishing wells:
Over which your reflection seems to hover: Alma,
Showing off your brown skin to the sun:
Like motes of amber angels making me sticky tongued:
So that my words are glued
Like stamps
Like horses hooves in a deep forest or a swamp:
But when riding beside you as we drove
Down to Miami to get the official documents:
Why then, it
Felt for almost all of the time that could be counted
That my changes were done,
And my motions just a zoetrope performing for children
On a merry-go-round:
The lush numbers of the fairytales with cobweb wings in
The aloe-
Already stolen from the neighbors citrus before the old
Neighborhood was developed
And paved: when the cenotaphs of the conquistadors
Still sang and looked through the dunes
Of blue pornography: - and all of it was about something,
While the waves rolled in from off the gods’ breathing;
And you were all but a child in old
Mexico- Alma, to whom your mother, Rose, was yet singing.