How To Get Down Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Animals of toys and cloth,
Or my mother’s hands brushing the rough
Skin of
Christmas trees. She is even saying to
Me now,
You must be good- you must be,
As the canal slopes away,
Past the sleeping campers and down to
The hypnotized alligator
To where the little girls come sleepwalking
Across the slow green water,
Crushing the lilies whose throats hang twisted
Up with lost bicycles
And wavering prostitutes: this is the thing
That is,
Falling down from the suburban giants:
Here is where she is, reptilian- green throated,
Singing her wares,
As the airplanes whisper to her like anxious
Bees because they cannot figure how
To get down.