Dan Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I’ve already written about Dan,
And I’ve watched him drive away.
Now I listen to traffic, and I’m on my second glass
Of rum. I try not to feel my face, or how I love
Her or say her name: Erin. But damn, I have,
But at least I haven’t dedicated anything to her,
But if I get something else published then I might;
If I stopped this useless anonymous sway, and went
Over to her house and mowed her lawn and held
And petted her cat; and kissed her father on her lips
To make him laugh, or delivered her a Christmas tree,
Or caught a blue bird in one hand and taught it into a song bird
I carried on a thatch of sprigs over my shoulder like a knapsack
Like a transcendental soothsayer going from classroom
To classroom as from town to town in high school, selling
My lines for bread, and stopped masturbating in the bathroom,
Over the porcelain fjord, the useless sex organ fixed by
Plumbers, destroyed by cherry bombs, evacuating into the
Anonymous saltwater estuaries which mingle with the sea and
Atop of that the oil rigs like water spiders skating. I suppose
I should end with the way the traffic is moving, horrendously
Useless and expeditious and naive, and even if I go back to
School I will have nothing left to say to her; but will read about
Mark Twain and how tonight I delivered a Christmas tree to
A drunk French woman and how, afterwards, I came after her,
And how I remember her daughter smiling at me, her angelic
Bone structure open, but also fretful, her eyes wandering like
Careful hikers over the halfway ruined side of my face.