Inside, A Garden Or A Gun Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I do this because I think,
If I peel out loud enough I should identify the
Kidnappers;
And I am not my uncle, nor my father,
No good at grooming horses or selling
Produce,

But noticing the twisting ribbons of overpass
Shadowing the heads of my tumbling future,
The tramps in the running shadows,
The snakes sucking eggs in the crèches of
An organized woods;

And you would think that there is so many things
To do,
So many arrangements, and holidays for marriage;
Elise in her faux jewelry bighting the inside
Of her cheek,
Thinking that she should get off the couch and bake
A pie, do something for evening,
But she doesn’t do but another glass,
A slight adjustment of comfortable legs;

Outside and far away,
The almost blue is falling, failing like this into
The next sweltering darkness when the cars will return
In yellow parade,
Them too to only turn off, to shuffle through,
And clink ice in the dry glass soon to swim;

I do this for the corn fields sleeping in the hair-lips
Of melted glaciers,
And the beautiful women who inherited car dealerships,
Because I stumbled through the interview to deliver
Their mail- I assigned my body to the lonely post
Where it is best so,
And would be better if it knew the just names of
Flowers, a horticulturalist,
Or Swedish Tulip farmer;

But I give it over to your decision,
My head depressed like one of the weary mountains,
My dogs curled at my gray feet,
The bureau drawer half open- fake wood-
Inside, a garden or a gun.