Giving Her This Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This little brook is encapsuled in time:
And me spilling liquor, and making my rhyme:
Forced and exposed out upon the parasols
That have always tried to awaken early enough to deliver their
Lunches to you on time:
While the little birds take out before forest fires,
With homeopathic birthday wishes on their wings, while entire
Ships of Mexicans sit out and wait before the orchards,
Waiting for the first pinpricks of celestial
Light to appear through the fruits that their fathers and forefathers
Have already harvested:
Through so many turnstiles of so many fruit markets, and through
So many accords of the fruitless holidays who opened their
Throats up accordingly beneath the dampening wings that bled
From Georgia,
And settled like the down syndrome of wishes to be carried by
The sheltered backs of terrapin through the blue lions’ graveyards,
The quills that flattered the armpits of conquistadors
Out across the clairvoyant dunes and palmettos:
And now all of this, whispers of loved ones to one another through
The ghosts of drywall, like the impotent walls of a university,
Or the stain glasses of a church; until it is all gathered up in a psalm
And placed at the skirts of the Virgin of Guadalupe;
Where it is sworn to her, by me- that Alma has always been my first
And my last wish- and as my first and last muse,
Like a fabulous deer whose life has all been played out on the nocturnal
Carnivores of the highway- with all of the birthday candles being
Blown out, and the stewardesses finally going to sleep in a long
And burnished flight over the Atlantic: it is all I have to give:
And I swear, as if my thumb was singed by a fire from the overgrowth:
And pulling back, retreating: eating myself- but even while
Defeated, giving her this.