Like A Fool Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Going down again and making an easiness out
Of the incense of the gypsy camps I’ve seen grazing in
Alma’s eyes:
And I want to propose to her atop the hill we both surmounted
While jogging in Dreher Park:
Alma, I don’t want to leave you again, because I am fearful that
My words are not strong enough to truly capture you:
I love you here in the hours that slip away over your brown shoulders:
Even when you are mean to me, Alma, I love you;
And it is as painful as the unrequited love I once felt in the daycares of
My earliest of thieveries,
Because I could never quite make my own way like my father,
Alma:
And you know that he is a beautiful man, but he doesn’t know that I
Love you,
But maybe he wonders why I am still working at the fruiteria he was
Banished from.
So I now feel like a deposed prince who without any power gets to
Look at your beautiful country sides;
For there you are in a gentle slope of your gloriously eyed thieveries
Slanting throughout my day:
I stayed here because I love you, Alma: I became a cenotaph who moves
And breathes,
And my body is an engraving on a tomb that thumbs its chest
And behaves like a fool for you, Alma.