The Thing That No One Saw Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I chose to become the thing that no one saw.
I went to Hollywood not to aspire to act,
But to play in wrecked train cars that rust like
Flowers in the dry yellow knee-high grass,
Before blowing all my money at once
To return after two weeks to sleep in Arizona.

The last thing I was in high school, which
Wasn’t for very long and even then I preferred
The muddied easement beside the canal
Where only I and the animals moved,
Where I could use shadows for friends.
I went to school every other week,
And kissed and fondled invisible women
In the low subtle branches of the tart orange trees.

For the past year, I have only made love to mountains,
And those less and less frequent. Soon they too will
Forget the feel of my weight upon them. I no longer even pretend
To be with women, for their ghosts haunt me and live
Inside little castles in my bones. They cry out to me in
The lonely night, asking me to enter them, but I withdraw
And can only look at them, like fading abstract art,
As their beds slide further away,
Like train cars leaving my side.

Sometimes I see my
Grandfather staring worriedly at me from the other room
Before he shuts the door,
But I never go to visit him or my dead grandmother
Upon the hill. Instead I drive to a far away town
And pretended to buy a house, something little in a cul-de-sac,
Where my father can’t bother me, and my friends would
Be very poor and infrequent; we would live in little lives,
All together forgotten, but I return to Nutrioso
After a couple of hours, exhausted and breathing mist.
Dutifully, I feed the mob of horses, assured that I am no one.
Needing to be close to someone for a few minutes, I microwave
Grandfather dinner and he says a prayer.

When my family knew me, they worried for my future,
But now they don’t remember that I was once their son.
Nor can she remember, the nocturnal flower who blossoms
In my sleeping mind, how my hips poked her as we made love,
Because her life is always moving forward,
Perpetually being filled with the gears of her friends and
Welcomed strangers, as I am deluded by the darkening night of
So many passing years, as melting ice-cubes cheapen
Good whiskey, and when she cries out his name in that
Secret hour of the cat, she no longer worries that she might
Speak to me instead. For she is sure I never was, just
The shadow of a thing she thought she once saw, before
She fired her gun and then stepped forward.