Whom She Came To Ask Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I was going to the cooler to become a thinker
When all of a sudden a blond girl comes into the market:
She is winsome as anything that might mentioned,
And she wants to know about trees:
Trees, and she is from Poland and she wants to send that
Certain type of pine tree back home to her sister,
Or someone who should be so lucky;
And she stands right next to me and points across the way,
So I have to squint because I am not sure, but I dearly wish to please
Her:
She is such a sudden treat and puts suicide back into its closeted
Nothing, but now I don’t know what the tree is:
I can barely see it, because it is so far away: it is across the street
And the next yard and rising like a gaunt titan under the skirt
Of the power lines;
Yes, that is the one, and now I have the same type of pine tree growing
In my future yard, but for the girl I could say nothing:
Trying to keep her there as long as I could, I promised to ask the little
Guatemalan and he in turn asked the Venezuelan and we all stood
Around her like three of the dumbest wise men, sharing wolfish looks,
Our nostrils flaring from her mail-order bouquet;
And I guess that she knew that she must all the time be doing this,
And causing the disgusting self mutilations in the lonely nights transgressions,
Or by ourselves in the long silver trailer parks of the day: weeks later
I think of her, because I am buying a soft yellow house with that same
Sort of tree rising up from the yard, bowed like an imperfect phallus
And yet something extremely beautiful;
And that is why she wanted to know the proper name for him,
And I am still glad that it was I who she came to ask.