To Attend To Again Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Warm perfumes in the rectories, as the pigeons return
With their messages:
Alma’s favorite color is still green, and we ate camarones together
Today:
And her eyes, and her eyes: what did they say to me,
And what did they leave behind, spilling their ephemeral guts with
The apple seeds down my throat,
While the marionettes picked up and carried away:
The horses stumbling in the clutches of rattlesnakes, breaking
Their trifectas underneath the turquoise stones backlit
By the haunted mountains
Where the gold is buried, where I left my grandmother and my dogs
With their celibacy: and I joined the grave robbers behind my
House,
And together across the cathedrals of a canal we began to sing to
Her and to over imbibe,
And our house of loneliness began to swim as we learned her
Phone number;
But forgetting how many times we spoke of our love as we
Made love to her, it felt as if we were lost
Like slaves who could not swim in the embargos of her landscaping,
Even while the street lights lamped our windows light churches,
And the hurricanes spoke like totems, like tattoos to
The magnitudes of the Atlantic that we could never even use
Our bicycles to understand;
And in other houses of her cousins the meals of corn were flattened
Into the dinner beneath the virgins and the roses,
While the rattlesnakes tucked in, wishing for the virtues of her legs
To slip into their venoms to kiss voluptuously poisoned
Across the fleshes of forests and classrooms that I am absolutely fearful
My love will never be so careful as to open her eyes to attend to
Again.