All I Wanted Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I wanted to hold your hand
While your mother was away,
Bringing back sack lunch for her
Little birds:
To hold up that slender portion of
Junoesque gravity;
As if I had become your moon,
Receptive, stuck and dizzy like a crippled
Bee on the dumb lip of a sated terrapin:
To solder a new crèche for your hungry
Digits
At the edge of the carport of
The Catholic Church;
But you, already mystified, socially husbanded,
Given to the responsibilities of a flash-epoch,
Goddess like, yes- lactating with a vine
Of children at your hip;
You had become disinterested long before,
When you saw me take ecstasy at Disney World,
And I lost focus:
I lost my train of thought, became lethargic,
Bound to sleeping in lavatories,
Green smoke doing calligraphies out from the
Pullulating landscapes:
I couldn’t feel the rides at all; demystified in fast
And modern trips of coming ups and goings down,
My eyes something nocturnal and sated
With nothing much to do:
And in body, you went away from me,
Red-bricked versatile, but forgetful to the needs of
Wet clay;
Tremulous afterwards, I could never fully realize,
Hobo in my transient rooms I tried to conceive the flood;
I teared ankle-deep; but it was no use:
All the animals were safe,
And you in Colorado, stabilized, ocean-deep couldn’t
Know-
All I wanted to do was hold your hand
While your mother was away.