For Who Knows How Many Hours Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Fireworks in the desert- fireworks in the sky-
Like little girls who take your money-
Only to show off, and then only to die:
And I want to go away to make money for my mother and
Father,
To ferris wheel above the traffickings of the earth,
Holding my breaths of wishes,
While the clothes dry, and the cats make love on the
Fences: and in whatever fields that are left,
They are playing baseball,
And I perform for my muse- brown eyed and brown
Bodies, fearful of mountains,
She faithfully returns to her family every night,
The way a freshman returns to her favorite water fountain
Between classes, while the truants leap hot footed over the
Canals- and she never sees them,
Or the playgrounds that they have molested: she simply
Enfolds back into the lectures
That envelop a brown stage beside the cafeteria;
As outside,
A bit of green rain cloud follows a lost trail over
A broken down school buses, where a corpulent tortoise
Has been busy making love to a woebegone orchid
For who knows how many hours.