My Wishes That Will Soon Be Gone Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I am not here and yet
I am not very there: perhaps I am not anywhere,
But the traffic rolls and the relatives
Come to visit relatives
Under the seeking planes- under the juju bees,
And the sad tips of weeping mountains:
I am there, or I am not:
I am vanished like a fortress, or a swing-set:
Alma, or a forget me not:
And I could very well smell you right there
Today
Even though you were gone,
Like the airplanes that touched down from here
Were swept away into the sky:
Oh, Alma: they were gone; they had migrated like
A baseball game,
Even though my mouth was so wet, and there was all
Of these opposing sex of my species growing up so young and
Springy in the grasses;
And maybe all of this is of your song, Alma,
Because I told you that I was a gringo, and I only had need
For the rhythm of one beating of one heart, Alma,
And that is your heart,
Even if I am woebegone, even if you sleep beside the man you
Love;
It is still only the one rhythm of your beating heart that I kill myself
Over,
And upon which I blow my wishes that I will soon be gone.