Entire Orchard Of Things That Are Lost Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If there was a turtle sitting there
Slanted into the canal my mother dove into-
Could I ask him where she fled
Off to, the house wanting to follow her-
The car in the carport,
The laundry in the laundry machine missing her:
She fled,
And left the smell of the orange blossoms, and the
Screams of the neighbor girl being molested
While we all drank beer and listened until
Later when the goldfish sank,
And when the cats were making love: I was too
Young to skip school, so I rode with father down
Into Miami and we picked fruit out of
Boxes and spoke nothing of how she could
Have disappeared in the shallow murk:
She once showed me the tadpoles metamorphosing
In there, a green bathtub-
And when she took me home we ate apples with
My sisters off of dinner plates- but now
She is gone into that pool in which the stars have
No reflection, but down there I can see
Stolen bicycles and the statuaries of moribund alligators-
An entire orchard of things that are lost which now
Belong to her.