The Pistils of Your Orchards

The Pistils of Your Orchards
By Robert Rorabeck

Because of your jealousy, your sister can see
That you care:
There are slow diamonds in your hair, and ladders leading down:
You work with her at the fruit market past the closing theatres
Of crepuscule
Even after I am no longer around; and I have taken a bullet
In my soul for you, Alma:
And she doesn't know that we make love; and it is because of
You that I am even now slipping away
Underneath the backyards patios decorated sparsely by you
And your friends:
It is almost Michael's birthday, anyways- and your tiny brown
Bodies wave together in their Catholic haunts,
Never even once dreaming about the swimming pools of richer
Elements; or how I lay discarded at your feet like
An otter heady for the pistils of your orchards, blowing their
Alluring scents from a bedroom into which I
Will never follow,
The bicycles surrounding them like gifts underneath a starlit
Christmas tree that I will never be allowed to give.