Lucky Thirteen Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The agreeable bodies must have said dive like stars;
And she was very nervous, and I cleaned my
Telescopic spaces with alcohol;
And she asked me if I hadn’t come from the bars,
But I had been seeing outlaw movies with that old teacher:
Where once there must have been an apple orchard,
We made fabulous love over the armpits of the cenotaph
Of alligators;
And I could almost hear them meeting as she exhaled,
As there was no television; and the right parts fitted good:
She was only twenty, and my lucky thirteen;
And she was just new at this, and now there are no
Places on her body that I have never seen:
I will go to sleep at some odd number over thirty, and wake
Up like a mailman whistling on his rounds,
Retreating from no dogs, remembering her body like the
Positions of a lost precious thing up in the wavering tree:
The bodies move in unison like the ripples of a pool;
As my old muses must lock jaws with their old and new men,
Synchronized to the bodies that they too must enjoy;
As I enjoyed this wonderful young thing this feverish eve,
Awfully, nowhere near New Mexico, not even a sound anywhere
Near her grave, like an angel on the plate,
Entering a child who has no fear of death, the body thwarts
Itself and flies.