Joe & Jolene Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Percussion lines and scars, the little heated throbs,
The ants bite in lines of stream-line conquistadors-
The humid park is sweating out the bugs,
And the vendors come turning little things,
And everything has a piece and the sunlight is eaten up,
And school is out, and the fences are painted,
Where I hold still and look at her face.
My entire body is humming like a tuning fork pricked
By a gangster, and the clouds are banking in high towers
Over the shivering pines; and I am only sure that I want her,
Even as the police surround me cradling bell-jars of
Collected change:
That she was a child on the verge of metamorphosis,
Her feet webbed by the arachnidan spume, the drool of the
Crocodiles who aren’t even supposed to live here,
Lost crocodile tears and of the sad old men whose first
Born sons have drowned: The power-cables hum and the wind
Skips them like rope- There is a rhyme in the air, trying to
Cajole her, but the bullhorn is also speaking; I don’t want
To give up, but everything is shutting down. They are turning
Out the lights and the red clay of the baseball diamond is dimming.
The masters and their dogs are evacuating, and everything is sauntering
Off to homes of careless mothers, the wives and girlfriends of
The well situated lost; but still she hesitates, and if I stay long enough
I believe I will see who she is:
After all in this park, it is really only her and me,
Even after they’ve taken down the sides of the thing and moved on to
The next town, I will still believe I see her sometimes rippling like a
Sheet torn in the higher canopies, like a lost kite,
Or something that is once again almost free-
And I await her return into me after the rest of the show has given
Up and walked through the diminishing spaces, happening to be
No more alive than the well-populated cemetery,
Leaving only this to wait upon the precipice of belief.