I envision you in the daylight of airplanes:
While the prize worthy horses are making their rounds
And all of the Mexicans are expulsed from
New Mexico:
Just like this evening, on Christmas, I sat besides a girl
From Boston who thought, according to my
Baseball cap,
That I was also a Mexican- and I almost fooled her,
While my soul was in the clutches of the fox’s jaws who’d
Gotten into the chicken coop while I waited
For you to get back home:
Even though I could not see you, Alma- and even though
It was not raining;
It felt like I could, and it felt like it was- as the sensual ness
Of your body lingered before me
Like a manikin luring a blind man across the street
Or into the clutches of an autumn lake-
As I watched one crossing the street before my car again
Today-
As I was driving again somewhere without you-
And then the aspens cried and shed their bows up atop
The switchbacks of some autumn peak I guess you’ve
Never seen, except when looking in the mirror:
Alma-
And then when looking away, my dogs howl, my sisters
Return home across the lonely streets, lingering in the open moonlight
For a sister whom I guess they will never have-
As you return home, yourself, like the soft confines of your
Grandfather’s guitar- like a bastard stolen from Spain
And thus sewn into the pitiless crops of some pagan continent
Across so many seas and so far away.
Robert Rorabeck
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/so-many-seas/
