Maritime Engagements Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If I have cars, and I have numbers,
And windows situated so that they may never
Look out at the rain,
The bowled, smoothed teeth of cemeteries,
Like herbivores grazing,
Gumming the lintel-space between the shade trees
And earth, but I do not use them,
Because I haven’t yet figured out where I am
Going to live,
Then this object is complete without direction or purpose;
But the sea, oh she is a forever beautiful thing,
Going as she does all places and not a single one
All the same,
a single encompassing engagement
- The best thing is I can throw all of
My bottled desires into the collar of her crenulated neck, and
She’ll take it but never speak a difference.
She just keeps coming back to me, and then away-
In séance, an entranced dancer going about through
The conductions of an organic science
Full of Satan’s knowledge, kleptonic but without hands,
Boastful but with no smile- If I seed her,
But I will, and nothing shall grow in her other than those
Things which belong,
And do not notice me, for even with all my gifts wanting,
How should I breathe with them?