If I go to New Mexico <br />Again, and leave my true love behind <br />For a little while- <br />Will she become like that hallucination without <br />My trust: <br />Will she be the busy noise of an airplane <br />As it skips across the <br />Ocean, <br />Or the fire after it has eaten a forest <br />The butterflies have sifted into after a long <br />Journey- <br />Or even the fair after it has packed up and <br />Metamorphosed <br />Leaving only its prizes of gold fish to the housewives <br />Who are too young to care- <br />Will I become like a memory passed a thousand <br />Times a day on a busy highway, <br />The night and its descendants smelling of <br />Jasmine and the spent <br />Noises of engines- like a manmade <br />Ferality, <br />And will I have to spend away the waves of <br />My midnight thinking of her, <br />Hollowing and whittling her grottos into <br />My chest, <br />Like scars or tattoos, just trying to become <br />A longer poem holding out for her absence- <br />While she remains greener in another man’s mind, <br />Blazing like an airport of jealous jewelry- <br />Until she finally stops reminiscing of my make-believe <br />Promises, <br />And returns again to his sterile joy, <br />Losing all of her favorite color, <br />And her soul- her child busy at the hips of <br />Her playground, <br />And they ring around her again- <br />The sky blazes with forest fires that never signal <br />My name.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/with-forest-fires/
