Earth Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If I wasn’t so tired,
I could tell you where we’re going,
For there is an entire language of tricksters not so
Deep in the earth,
The laughing bellies of rain-men: ho, ho, ho;
But I’m not so good with other things,
Like driving cars and dancing girls and football,
but the earth is like a mirror, and I should say
Nothing more,
And the earth is like a home, or like a cemetery.
The waves are always leaping like class clowns
Onto it, not realizing that evaporated the earth
Smokes them as a truant under the same musseled
Trellises where they go leaping so gleefully:
The earth is a king at a waltz, and the sun his emperor,
But no more of that stuff: This is not supposed to be an
Early model of the universe,
But only a tiny little thing, a handful of dirt:
The coyote sniffs the earth. Fleas crawl up and stowaway
On his coat from the earth- Furrows of scars make tracks
On the earth. Chickens eat between the tracks,
Sometimes, while crossing the road, the are hypnotized by
The median: Otherwise, they too become the earth,
And this poem, or a quiet novel, and last century:
Great men say now the earth is thier’s, but they are not so
Correct that the earth doesn’t laugh at them, nor does it mind
The entire civilizations of footsteps marking up his chest:
He is good for scars, the earth, and knows that what we say
Are only the echoes we hear while even now we are
Coming back to him.