We Commence Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Sometimes scars mean I love you,
And the glittering webs the rain makes on school
Bus windows coming home;
Slowly bending down,
It feels like a thousand years ago,
Even when the sun comes out and rustles through
The grasses,
Huffing on each green blade until its cloudy with light-
I half expect it to find something,
And you are there, as you are in all of it,
Even though I think that this was even long before
I met you;
And you were in the canal, and in the red beads of
The Florida Holly,
In the sweaty bulbous citrus like blushing lures on
Each stem.
I used to wake up to your humid translucence,
And tried to put you on over my youthful loneliness’s;
And when you did come, what an example of life:
You bloomed once in my classroom,
Auburn and floating and then you were gone,
A priceless furniture of teak,
Tidal and retreated.
Paradoxically, I saw you everywhere and used to skip
Class and smoke in the eastern waves just to get close to
You. Then, as if in a dream, you kissed my neck when I
Was a man and then walked away and folded yourself against
Your true love, or whoever he is; and I was left with
So many splintering echoes of your fleeted embraces.
Now I think of moving next to you,
Of buying a home which will inspire you to think of me
Again, to reawaken you to my slow ochre glances,
The drift wood of my long distance romance,
And the vigilant terrapin who I keep as a pet watching you,
To the weathers I move in over you;
And even if it is all too late, and this is my grave I am dressing
Into, I will still come, because it is the nature of every man
To be flawed and needy,
To lay his scars bare before your sightless reflection,
To watch your beauty play out across the awake and dreaming
Heavens,
And to know you by the early mourning silences,
Before the cars, and restaurants, and sports of the luckier men
Rejuvenate to teem over you with all their frustrating
Distractions,
The time I yet have before you turn your gaze upon me
And we commence,
Breathlessly and mute, drowning by the dusk of the road,
Rolling where all the grasses are mowed and drowsily affluent:
This settled, we’ll nod and sweat
And drink whatever liquor will quiet the uncertainty of your
Lips,
And turn our mutual gazes to that steadfast terrapin,
My friend eating the proverbial orchid, and the dogs,
And I will try to explain what he means to us.