Holiday Of Rattlesnakes Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This is how it happens that there are
No more brides in the park,
With the sun coming up and the larks singing
For a lark;
And in her golden wedding dress she sets me down.
And with her roaming eyes roams all over town,
Across the train tracks,
Through the thistles,
Into the peonies of muddy dirges where the water moccasins
Make eyes
Flagged into the coattails of coal cars,
As the nocturnal planes skim the micas of daylight from
The skies;
And you sleep in your little room all at a loss,
Alma- soul carried from Mexico, but your baskets
Are full of bread
And artichoke hearts; and it all seems to come to me for
A reason:
Deaf and blind, I somehow hear and see,
Your brown lips echoing in warning and straying me towards
A holiday of rattlesnakes.