Down There In Mexico Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Bench marks for tadpoles who stare with wonder lusting
Eyes up to the green airplanes that fly
From here to Mexico:
Because in the bosque they have fireworks, and butterflies
Who no longer wonder how to fly:
They have made their way to decorate the smoky forest
And on her lips to die: some fairy tale who is
Sleeping there,
Born in the womb of Mexico- her children will sleep
Beneath her, lamps doused at the entrance of
An impoverished church,
As the daylight is siphoned out of the sky by the lips
Of bats who ballet around her, singing with their ears-
Going up from the scarred lips of the earth-
And going straight up to bleed on the
Stars- while her mother sweeps the dirt out onto the mat,
A mountain cat eats a coyote, and from her lips
The infernal spirits sprint like cinders-
Before they get to the earth around her Mexico,
They will look like fat black caterpillars
Until they crawl into a zoetrope full of shadows,
The end result of whatever metamorphosis there is
Down there in Mexico