Bouquets Of Seahorses Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Making airplanes to land in water fountains—
As the days slip like cowardly serpents in a bouquet of
Palmettos—
The keys of my soul dancing out another canvas—
Like strange spiders doing what is natural,
Skirting across the surfaces of some juvenile god's
Drinking fountain,
The beautiful women drunk and nubile and beautiful—
Just halfway through all of the world,
As the sculpture of a palace slips into the tears of
All of her inescapable daydreams—
Mermaids glimpsed between the caesuras—smelling of
Bouquets of seahorses and other lands not so
Far away from her that all of her teachers say do not exist.