The Sea I Cannot See Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Wounded are the words that no one saves—
Words that my mind misspelled the first
Time I flew into Shanghai, China—
When I was married on my second day,
To I wife I bought not borrowed:
I keep her in my little yellow house so near
The sea today,
And we will have our first child sometime
Tomorrow:
If I truly loved her, I couldn't say—
For my poems languish over the intangible
Shadows of the girls I pretended to love,
Or paid for before I even though to leave the
Country—A muse that languished,
The eighteenth girl I'd slept with—
A girl from Mexico, built with the delusions of
Windmills—an aperture to spearhead my
Lonely art—but it was a delicate situation—
Catholic, married—and more than that:
Two children—good excuses,
Even with endless gifts of bottle rockets and
Christmas trees,
But life only gets easier the longer you play
With death—
Now my wife, the sixtieth some odd girl
I've been with—
She sleeps in my bed, waiting for me—
Afraid that if I get drunk, who will
Drive her down to the birthing center in
Miami, FL—my mother arriving tonight,
Driving in from her place of business,
The Strawberry Palace in Plant City—
And I am up to my old misdeeds,
Still dreaming of girls I shouldn't—
My love beside me at night,
And the moon at some odd circle over
The sea I cannot see.