What I Wish To Say To Her Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Any word can be picked,
If she carries the needed sound, said
With the intonations lilting like a great midway
Of a world’s fair:
For one, her hair is streaming deep out in the
Flaxen field,
And I know her eyes are casting far across the
Furrowed earth, so wizened and unyielding:
Yet the clouds are there curtailing to the wind their
Forgetful sorrows- They will decide when to
Weep, but for now they are congregating high up
In the hall, and I am in the cemetery trying
To learn to spell:
The grass here is greener than anywhere, and
Though the willows weep, I know their roots go
Very deep, and touch the cheeks of young men no
Longer here,
And when the centipede comes crawling red and cheeky
Over the basilisk-like masonry, I think of her
Far across her field; with feckless tools I wish to
Earn her gaze, to draw her element into arcing play,
But she is not there- She is not real,
Though the insects rise up with the unmoved rain,
Like indecisive cannibals off to meandering war:
I’ll see her somewhere unexpectedly driving along
My border,
But when she comes she will be moving so assuredly,
As if a front before more sang-froid weather
That I will bight my tongue as she carries across
The sculpture of her body and then gone again,
Like an apparition on an early lake, but, truly,
What more could I have said to her?