Alma: I flood, I spill, and I lavish: <br />I look like a reindeer’s tongue being spread out in a bank <br />In some greatly snow banked town in the delusions <br />Of Arizona: <br />And in this way I resound; or I reverberate for you, like <br />Some greatly strung instrument <br />While my own parents are stringing tents for <br />New Years fireworks and none of <br />Them: not even my sister can believe that you truly love me: <br />But you truly love me: <br />Do you, Alma, <br />While the planes come in, fluctuating and making the sounds <br />Of a grand commotion: <br />And then once the holiday is over wont you go back to <br />Work with my cousin, <br />While the very same old sun floats over the very banks of <br />Everything and makes a mess of <br />Itself; <br />And your children steam on along- doing so fine out of your lions, <br />While the lions prefer to panhandle, <br />While there are deep clefts left into the earth, and the salmon die <br />Higher up, but every year returning through the pitchforks, <br />And the hot air balloons of all of the any old tourists <br />Get lost until they hit the power lines <br />And then fell like money pits into their super zealous wishing wells- <br />Attributing to no one; answering to themselves, <br />And licking their wounds just where they happened to fall- <br />Across the dirty carpets, down from the snowcapped banks of Telluride; <br />As you kiss your wounds, and meander through your silver <br />Ways to midnight and back again to West Palm Beach where <br />You don’t have to tell anyone, but curl into yourself <br />For the night- like a grail that glows with the big mouths of pearls, <br />Luminescent and basking in the shallow <br />And lonely bedrooms that are fondled through the inoffensive night.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-inoffensive-night/
