I carry pictures of that miraculous cloak, <br />But I will never make it that far to Canterbury, <br />Or wherever; <br />And it is almost as if now that I have gone down beneath the sea: <br />I can see you changing her, Alma: <br />I can feel you body almost disappearing the way it does at night <br />Laying beside your man: <br />You were pregnant with Michael when you were sixteen, <br />While I was kicking out the lights of my own dream: <br />There are many lights refracted deep in the beds of her sea, <br />And you can pray to your virgin and sea them all while you lay <br />Beside your man; <br />And nothing that I have had to say about you has been enough to <br />Describe a single one of your fingerprints, <br />Or the way you breath around me the three days a week we have together, <br />The nine hours a day: <br />I think it must be more time than you spend consciously with your husband, <br />But he will make you harvest the rabbits that you love anyways: <br />Bring them over to my house and save them, and we can start a new family; <br />And the sea will love us especially, <br />And we can still work together nine hours a day, <br />And sleep for as many hours together for so many nights.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-as-many-hours/
