Too Many Worlds Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Slides down into pools, baseball diamonds wimpled
And coy underwater:
I got my first gray cat when I learned how to pee in the toilet,
But I continued wetting the bed until I was twelve:
I loved Chelsea in kindergarten and she loved Michael;
I loved Denise in second grade:
I brought her tulips: I loved Kelly then, and kissed and tongued
Her once just off of Blue Heron:
Only once, and now she is driving back down to Tennessee to kiss
And hug her children,
And her husband, and by the middle of this week I will have a little
Spanish house that will also be my grave:
And I want to love a woman, because I have jogged all alone for so
Many nights side by side with the canals of this world:
I can no longer love white women, because they make me have nightmares
Of sleeping with my sister,
And their clothing is too beautiful to see myself in,
And the lips of Mexicans burn with fire, and the desire of new knowledge
To be born again,
To surrender to the flags of their third world countries,
And to wheel their leggy cannons into my new living room like green copper
Trams to pin mobiles over, and underneath those plans to kiss and mew to
Our mulatto children who through the both of us will know
Too many worlds to be contained by any of them.