Species Of The Flesh Poem by Robert Rorabeck

When people handle the
Species of the flesh,
They think of nothing but their
Long lost childhood
Vanished into space—
At a truck stop in New
Mexico, I pull over to
Sleep, as the world wraps
Around and around the
Pull of an insignificant
Star,
You hold your newly born
Husband close in sleep and
Call his name instead of
Mine,
As the sea breathes like a
Lover of your state just
Off to the east,
If you cared to listen—
I cannot hear it at all
Because it will not say
My name anymore, the
Same as your love;
The easy way you abandoned
The thorny garden we
Grew—In the weedy underbrush
We forgot to tend, but for
You now the bloom of adult
Life has begun
And you can breathe easy
And not have to strain
To listen for the sea,
Because the same sound comes
From your lover’s
Immediate lips—
I have nothing but scars
And time,
And no place to move towards,
Because all the towns of this space
Are so similar
That I forget myself.
Abandoned first by you and the
By the distance of time, a drifter,
I can only drive on,
Sleeping alone the lonely nights
In the way stations of forgotten men,
To awake in
The morning to an insignificant
Star,
And then to drive on.