The Grove Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Like intelligent swine shimmering in the mangroves,
The conquistadors are following the head of the cow.
If you look out my window from where we’re going,
You can see them kneeling before the opulent cross
Just inside the shadows of the weeping bay, but that
Is not what your mother told you, when she kissed your
Brow and laid you down inside the little house amidst
The others. She said to you, “Your two eyes are as
Beautiful as half penny marbles under the pines where
The airplanes fly like strange steeds frightened in a blue
Meadow.” And when she read to you from books whose
Unexplainable stains were more interesting than the
Characters, didn’t you believe that you would soon be
Going into the impenetrable night where most things
Never exhume. But I found you in a shallow well and
Took you up from where you’d scraped your knees upon
The jawbones of stolen bicycles. The thieves had not
Hid you well, though neither had you cried out to the
Night circling through the increments of lycanthropes,
Where the decrepit hands of the grandfather chronometers
Switchblade over the abnormal lake which took the place
Of your young memory of the merry-go-round, and the
Revolving hours where you hid the answers under falling leaves.
Now I am taking you to the man I believe you belong to,
Because a long time ago I saw you together in a photograph
Smiling like lucid sorrow in the park falling down to the sea,
Though where we are going can go on forever, as long
As you neither speak or look over once again to me.
Rather notice the bay of horses impressed upon the land’s palm,
And the tide rushing in as the daylight streaks across the
Troughs like the shivering brow of a man in a fever. Look
Towards the things I tell you are going away faster than
Racehorses on the final stretch, and together we will live
Through all of those who are passing, you with me in the
Passenger seat far away from home, the conquistadors now
Like gray herons crippled without light, a cross rippling in
The grove.