For Right Now Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Now eventually we’ll have to peel away from mountains,
While the narrow gauge railroad still takes her tourists
Back and forth between Silverton and Durango,
Even while I went back to her and climbed her peeks
After running down in a lightning storm
Not wishing to hear what the stones had to gossip to me:
That is how far up I’ve been Sharon,
And that really is all that I’ve seen:
That I have been above your bed by which you made your child on,
While my body was all alone and vagabonding;
And it has been ages since I have field tripped to a museum,
Except I took Alma to the zoo a week ago while my
Parents were losing the fruit market,
And then we kissed in the darkness: and we kissed:
Before that I slept atop of Alma’s roof and curses and blessed her,
And before that I skipped school and took off all of my clothes
All the way down to my under wear and stole a raft from
A middle class pool and luxuriated in the canals you never tasted:
But on Friday I smelled Alma’s perfume:
It lasted all the way down to Miami; and she only weighs a hundred
And ten pounds,
And she is younger than my youngest sister and more beautiful:
And that is no exageration, and that is why I write to her:
Because I can take her in the morning, Sharon, because she loves
Me even if she won’t admit it,
For all that I have written for her, but I can still remember you,
While all of the houses sleep in their darkened abutments,
Even though your perfume has disappeared into the abutments of
Another eclipse I fear that I shall never taste,
While Alma’s lips are a well I can reach tomorrow:
For she enriches me, and for right now I can live forever.