The Things We Experienced Together, So Far Apart Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Remembering as a child
Silver on the tree, and the furrows of
My grandfather’s bell pepper field,
Molesting and being molested by
My two year older aunt:
Corn snakes and rat snakes and black snakes
And red snakes;
And root beer- an entire armada of paper airplanes,
Most of them male dog fighting for the sexy
Female airplane- Hot Lips,
And Hot wheels,
Plastic Indians on green carpet fields:
Shooting Michelle in the tits with rubber bands one summer
Evening a few hours before true crepuscule;
And alligators that never moved-
Never, ever moved- and maybe Peter Pan,
And my true love hanging upside down
From the crook of a cypress tree:
Showing off her training bra, never kissing me with
A tongue as red as an air-plant’s pistil:
And then, finally, leaping over construction fires,
Shooting off my mouth,
Raiding liquor cabinets in seventh period instead of
Attending history;
And finally going on with all of it, down my ever branching
Avenue- never seeing love again- never turning back,
Or having her look up again amidst the gum-clogged desks
Of Latin class,
Forgetting who I was and how comets skipped across
The rippling sugar canes,
Estranged, out of work amidst the ceaseless cars:
Needing you after a decade’s absence, the things we experienced
Together, so far apart.