While You Lay Asleep Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Going through the motions of a work place,
Trying to make eyes with Alma:
Brown, saturnine, always cleaning: Alma:
Sometimes you look up at me and my soul tears away
Like a little boy releasing his kite,
Hoping it will go past the power lines and be free:
Sometimes you don’t look at me at all, and I stand beside
The water cooler
And know it is because I can’t put together two good stanzas:
I’ve been doing this all week:
Drinking and bumming for you, Alma, while you make love
To Nelson;
And where do your children sleep?
Where do your parents sleep:
You have so many beautifully and golden rings on your fingers:
You shop at the Sunshine Flea Market where I used to play in the open
Theatre of trees as a boy, past the clutches of
Rattle snakes and the dams of water moccasins:
I was alive a full seven years before you were conceived and then
Set out like a paper boat through the tiny saints of Guerrero Mexico;
But you found your way here, Alma,
To my playground, and we happened together as I made my way home:
And now I have no other wish but to find you out,
Alma,
To find out what your dreams sound like while you lay asleep.