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