The Liquors Of My Unconditional Will Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Maybe if Erin had discovered a baseball diamond in
Time and had learned to love the resuscitates of taking things off
In the choking redness of the earth,
Of covering the fullness of her breath with sleeping ants and
Arrowheads,
Maybe she would have found me out in time, and my love wouldn’t
Have died for her:
And by then all the rivers would have flown in to Arizona, and she
Would have picked her arc for our children:
I would have sent her another house’s worth of flowers;
I would have swept her off her feet as soon as I saw her on the tarmac,
And I would have made her wear jailhouse stripes so that all the jailors
Should have known that Erin should be my wife;
But all of this I’ll never know-
Now the rippling flesh of the men Erin has known in place of my
Bicycle breath, grows hoary; it doesn’t even grow roots, Erin:
How many men did you let put themselves in, when I was thinking of you,
My pain swinging over the peaceful beds of a cemetery;
And how did they make you feel, squeezed up and pullulating
Pressed like a music box to its windowsill:
My yellow house will be empty until I can find another woman who, while
She has time, learns to drink the liquors of my unconditional will:
But Erin, Erin- this is something that you never will.