Too Afraid To Visit The Graves Of The Girls I Love Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Cold and almost down deep enough to see,
The sky is a blind woman clothed in shimmering
Rags;
And I am failing her- I can barely breathe,
And the girls who once sat against me in class
Like windblown trees, roller skate over my bones,
The innocuous cenotaphs lying on the blistered
Planes of Colorado- They are shooting forth to
Find the cavaliers, to take shelter and wash themselves
Under the silver shields and platters:
She has made so many more important friends, well
Dressed, who graduate from Harvard and go
On cruises; and the truth is, I can’t even fix cars,
And am even too afraid to visit the graves of the
Girls I love, but I just keep doing this, tooting my
Fading horn after all my cousins have already charged
Into marriage, sunken into the trailer parks of a
Penniless saccharine malaise, they love the things they
Love, and don’t have to work for it, or try and appear
Proud and handsome- She is married now,
But my words are spilled down here the cheap forensic
Evidence in the black and white noir, never found or
Even thought to look for, with the wavering plastic weeds
The toy mermaids made of hard and knotted wood,
Who I have given my heart to, but it seems they also
Are never hungry.