Eternal Sleep Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Salmon spawn and die somewhere else
Far above my head and across the canal:
And I’ve worked all day, and have a nice tan.
The Mexicans don’t look at me funny,
And they call me primo- The gringos still stare;
Their eyes are blue and wet like frightened
Newborns, and they are growing bald.
The traffic rounds and moans,
While I drink one hundred proof bourbon and
Prepare to read Lorca, to watch after all the open
Balconies out past the lime groves in Madrid,
The hidden continents of Roman platoons,
And the rocky clefts like open breasts entombed
By the cursive winds; the pensive scribes who
Behold the oldest of seas, their expensive fraternity
Shipwrecked on her left collar-bone, the patio
Of the outdoor restaurant in North Central Florida
Where I walked to buy books that were on sale;
Pensively, still searching for her, and she recalled my
Name and migrated towards me the few steps it took
To imprint her species upon my neck. Now the
Recreational vehicles sink from the procreation of
Intelligent cockroaches, but even they are crooning her
Name: And we sing to her, even tonight under the
Tangled nets of power lines, a book with Lorca’s
Poetry in both Spanish and English next to my hip.
Tucked away, a book I have written, and still
Further off, pink-bellied but persistent, swim the
Other things I would give into her before eternal sleep.