The Orange Groves Where You Lived Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What is there to say of your love- you have
Gone to Palmetto to be with your husband, to see your
Son-
And from my life, like mist rising from the campuses
I used to walk,
Still dreaming of albino women, and their
Sick witchcrafts-
And tonight it rains a sick week before the Forth of
July;
You will be all week with him, gone to Ocala as if
To be with the horses,
And not listening to my failures of songs about you,
Like this one, told to an empty church
In a flooding crepuscule,
An empty swing set- an open mailbox, as if something
Half tamed escaped across the canal again
To be there
All during school, and even after I get out, sweating off
My clothes and occupations- to return aboriginal
And to hunt for you over the smoking sugar
Canes of my rum,
And into the orange groves where you lived for so
Many years after you fled into my country.

Alma.