Indefinite Lives Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The verbs are broken:
See how they hang out giving
Purpose to nothing,
Smoking in the van through
All their classes,
Not willing to participate,
Yet they will stop when she walks by.
Their lips don’t move when her legs move.
They hang apart like broken hinges,
Like anticipatory insect wings,
Bookcasing nicotine patinas,
But they don’t even smile,
Because she doesn’t look their way:
She goes by like a long industrious train,
Like a caravan in the desert,
Giving off its mirages.
Soon it will be the last day of high school,
And the boys in the van
Will never see her again,
At least not in any meaningful way.
She might last awhile longer,
She might become anything,
But that day in the student parking lot,
While the sky inhaled the sun
And exhaled the clouds off the Atlantic,
She will remain forever,
A vision unspoken to,
While the meaningless things carry on
With their indefinite lives.