Disbelieving Traveller Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I used to climb mountains to see god:
I’d only do this on weekends, and I’d skin so
Much knee,
Like a stone skipped from Tallahassee Florida to Colorado,
Like a star crossed aphorism following the sexual
Horizon even though
He didn’t believe in god; but this left his girl
Unattended in her gardens,
And you can only imagine all the milkmen,
Postmen and fire hydrants to draw milk and water
From;
But now I don’t hike anymore, and only dream of
Documentaries,
Of making good tips selling Christmas trees,
And setting up gifts of girls from high school I shouldn’t
See anymore-
The sweet little gifts of other men who answer their
Phones, who bake apple pies and attend to their offices:
With eyes that never close, badly bruised drinking coffee
In offensive movies,
Blowing like tattered ragtime out the open windows;
And I loved her but that was just in the park, in the nursery
Rhyme: If I really had to spend time with her, to clock in my
Hours by her, I would have run away long before,
As I have done so many times;
But now I am already perambulating in the greater nocturnal
Gardens they thought to keep under wraps; and I can feel my
Pulse in low oxygen, something alive and needing more of
It making the marble statues move
Giving gifts to no one; and in the altruistic summits I haunt
While lower down even then tourists are skiing,
And a god that is almost a possible thing to which I travel
Disbelieving.