The Only Instances That Let Me Live Poem by Robert Rorabeck

All the day bullwhips and I drink:
Super heros who have become too heavy for their
Britches sink and drink underneath the
Old homestead’s overpasses,
And I have been trying out without any hope of accomplishment:
And I wonder what Alma looked like going to high school,
Except that she never went:
Alma was pregnant and embarrassed on a bus straight through
Texas and to the limestone beds of
Florida even while she was turning sixteen:
The same age as her younger sister who just had her confirmation
Across the street from where we used to sell Christmas trees,
And I’ve asked Alma to marry me a couple of times,
And I have bought Alma many things:
But where is she now, the graveyards sing with their vastly sunken
Fraternity of entrenched kings:
But she is here, walking over them with so many legs, like
A water spider, like an orchid in Monet:
And she doesn’t even know how she awakens the vermilion
Yards during crepuscule
And makes them sing: while I am vastly alone, Alma:
All my nights are alone,
And the three times that you’ve been over to my house, they are
Like a fairytale in which something important is given to a nameless
Hero,
Which allows him to defeat the evil things:
Mute and blind, I call to you from a burial mound that shoots like
The cataracts of newly resurrected venison,
For your brown skin walking onto my property turns a mausoleum into
A fairground:
Alma, being with you are the only instances that let me live.