Beginning To Make Love Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Inkless, I expose myself-
I am just a shell pressed to your lips:
Drink my flesh,
Gnaw on my elbow I toss to you
Like a bright hinge where all is naked
And living in yesterday on the dry rented
Lawn, in the deep aloe and the
Chain-link fence where the
Old neighbors are smoking and drinking
American beers distilled from
The smoke stacked refineries of Denver,
Letting the sun into them so they crinkle
Like a mouthful of raisins on old newspaper:
Let the waves caress you as you feed-
They would not be near enough to you,
Except that I am carrying them now with
My one remaining arm,
And setting them at your feet:
Where they wash you as Mary washed
Jesus and anointed him with frankincense and myrrh
Eat, eat.
Your eyes are so beautiful,
I wish that they were pearls, but then
They would not be so precious: Naked,
You are the dawn, and clothing you become
The dusk-
And you are the best thing I’ve seen all day,
Even brighter than the budding hibiscus next to
The old door to the trailer driven down from the north
Where I once lived-
I can see you getting restless and touching yourself,
But do not go away where you think
You must be- He can wait,
Remain with me now,
Even if you feel that you must look towards him....
From here we can smell the sea past the darkness of
The woods, and there is the failing light glinting
Off the small white skulls of forgotten animals
Across the canal that is made iridescent
With the purple perfumes of oil and refuge,
The air above it blotched by a persistent pallet of
Gnat and mosquitoes:
Come closer now, and I will quiet these waves
Into a lull, and we can remain here and become the blur
Of shade, feel the day sliding off of us with
Its worry and light which reveals
What one might own:
Now in the quiet, everything is yours:
I am yours and I have brought the dusk unto you,
And in the time of transient dreams
I wish to kiss you only this once and
Never again
To bring on the crickets and the little lights,
As the clouds jumble the promises of rain,
And from the little house whose yard we’re now in
Comes the sounds of my parents
Beginning to make love.