Like Knives Through Birthday Cake Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Jumping for joy, the waves jump above the fire hydrants
And the sailfish jump
As if pooled by the looming moonlight, or something about
That night anyways,
While a muse as old as kindergarten or at least as old
As fifth grade
Leaves her husband for a cheap captain of any other ship:
While I remember her there on the shell rock road
Counting astrological
Mythologies of toads and washing machines- while I was
Still working with my parents,
And living in the trailer parks of abandoned nurseries;
And all of my thoughts drifted towards her
Like a cloud of pollen escaping to the petting zoo of
A rattlesnake,
And rolling over her shoulders for her to kiss me:
And she kisses me one time,
And swings with me: away, away, away:
One kiss- Now she is with a new man and thinks that she’s
Been baptized, but it is too early to know,
And her four children awaken beside her, shedding themselves
Like katydids at least twice a week,
With the palmettos cutting up the sunlight like knives through
Birthday cake.