Good Cheer Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Now broken and as sad as the shadows I live
In underneath the overpasses
With the unicorns and bums:
Over which the paper airplanes her father folded
Bend down so low,
So low that they figure that they have to kiss
Me and this is how they go—
Even though, abracadabra-ick,
They have never seen the inside of the mountains
And the spaces that they live in are not
That rich just two bedroom one
Bath apartments—
Which I closed my eyes and taught in once or twice
For two years—
Condemned by the faculty and the administration
That all I was doing was giving them
Candy.
But this will end their fears:
I am a space ship made of freshly baked bread
And fish,
And none of your classrooms will read
Me unless they want to wish:
And remember that a cadaver lords over the ill-
Forgotten seas,
And comes up before the winter
To pray and bend his knee
To the cenotaph of the waves that crashed
And drank such bouquets
Of poetry, like sharks who dined on sailors’ legs:
Well, I am right here
And I am in memory—
My wife is waking up in time for supper—
And Santa Claus is getting ready to give away
Good cheer.