Failing You In The Mortal Night Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If you let me love your shadow,
I will follow you in and out of stores, my tongue
Never touching anything but your souls:
And I am failing, failing like a kite with not
Too much wind- Doing something that is Anti-social,
Not bothering hunting out the eggs for Easter,
Or Passover,
Not having any religion which isn’t pentagrammed-
I can smell my rum,
And you eyes all the way from the racecourses,
From the glacial glades where no one mows your yards
Because they cannot get that high;
And if you can hear my screaming, do not care,
Know that it is just a dusky dream- something a poor
Boy does because he doesn’t have tack for his horse,
But his flock is alright-
He’s just upset because he’s outgrown his mother
And her bed- That he’s lost all his money betting on a girl
That has no business loving him- who shows to her
Every night his two unshelled wrists, and gets no reply
Except when there is a fire under her skirts,
And that happens as much as the good guy wins;
And now let there be silence except for the sparse code of
Bare canopies on power lines over your house
Waiting until there comes the paper snowflakes, the thunder
Of rolled cannonballs and the other theatrics of this
Winter’s burlesque resort- Every so often the skiers slosh
Through the snow and you look up,
Hoping like me that they will enter, but unlike me,
Who looks for milky friendship, you the Madonna with the
Rich child already suckling,
Only needs them to buy the spirits they entered for
And then to leave by the same way they came in.