Craftman's Heaven Poem by Robert Rorabeck

She said she never stopped reading my poems;
But from her venal mansions she never cared to right more
Than a hair’s-lick;
When I told her so many times that I wanted to undress
Her midway,
And sail like a flute-boned bandit through her arid
Spanish streams;
And then she would know that the sign language of my blood
Beat with the percussion of her winsome curves,
Like bows and arrows striking down across
The living cadavers of plywood men,
Cutting right through the knots of hearts:
Erin said that she never stopped giving a damn about the
Words I wrote to her choke-cherry orchard,
Coming up with the stuff the way hair and nails grow after
Death;
And she went with her men and her gods back and forth
Through the sea;
She said my words made her come, but it was only
From a distance where she saw herself reflected in my craftsman’s
Heaven:
She neither saw nor thought of me.