In A Bed Of Moonlight Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The calves mew their tibouchinas
And I wait for Alma to
Call: the cats are building their castles across the Canal
Where the salmon lactate their minnows
And the cowgirls spill with their dinner bells into
The hall:
When the busses come, they put purple flowers in their
Hair and turn around so many times that it
Seems preposterous:
Just as Alma will never leave her family for us-
It is as if someone refuses to leave hell to spend a fieldtrip
In Disney World;
And yet I have felt her up, and given her legs the bouquets of
My lips-
And I have pleasured her the way waves break in the pylons
Of the fishermen of milkmen:
Sipped the lactates of her caves, and have otherwise enjoyed
Her loneliness- and closing my eyes,
Committed the crimes of bathing with her out of doors
In the fountains of banks and other
Places in Miami and across the Gulf of Mexico that we
Were never suppose to go in to value one another:
And yet we go- with our eyes opened, and our eyes closed-
With the pilgrimages of the snakes and
The foxes through the heather- and the shampoos in the corridors
Of her daughter;
Until we have to burn away anyways, offering our souls like
Paper to the dead,
Her tiny hand closing around my hand the way the sated wildflowers
Go to sleep atop of their lingering firemen in a bed of moonlight.