The Breath To Go On Living Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This is not a game, this is my soul being cleaned on
A rock; it is already very fine, and it is breathless:
You who should use all that there is, the very best of it
To cloth yourself and feed your children,
To make it through the snowbound pass without having to
Starve for the more of it;
This is what I have given you the best know how to make you
Finish the game the champion,
Or to go down well perfumed into the aquarium of a slippery rub
With your husband, to love him as your lubber;
Because I am dead, and I am gone; and this is just the material
Of my empathy,
Like a fir lined palpation enjoying the afterthought of your heather:
This is my last breath, wanting more liquor,
And my last poem coming into the night, not expecting any other;
And I am just the terrapin taking shelter underneath the
Mothering overpass,
Expecting to see you and no other; while you have slipped away
Into your own pearly forts oiled to the nines by your
Oily men, touching you in the reciprocations of the liner notes
Of your shadows;
All the landscaping that has breathed its new life underneath
The dolls house of your moony childhood;
Turning like a merry-go-round until it has turned so many times
As to be a windmill or a merry-go round;
And then turning the of the lifeless into the living, until I look up
And unearthed see your eyes like the highest point of waves
Caressing the waves, and through their sincere reflection find
The breath to go on living.