Marriage Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Better walls at night seal the pigeons in the stars.
They walk into the sunset, into the waves, and the deep sea.
They prick their heals on the clefts of sunken war ships,
The dead dreams of dreary emperors,
The blind stalks of starfish wavering, wanting to understand,
The evolution of those who have moved on, and up, and up;
Where they cannot be found by who they were,
Those still wishing to understand the declivities of human warmth;
Those fellowships of comfortable eyes fawning like specks
Of amusement light on their partners’ recognized silhouettes,
The houses of warm bones, the grinning doors,
And the tongues, the kitchens, waiting to feed and be fed by
Those tongues, the bedrooms, the heady pillows, the musk of Ferris-Wheels.
Down unto the toes, and up again; Next to each other,
Door to door, they circle above the earth where the air is warm
And the sea is whispering like an allied country skipping airplanes
Like stones across the atolls of her knees, messages of wedded union
Glowing like happy relatives in the rosy wharf;

In the morning they rise as one household and the light,
Strong in its morality, plays through the open doorways like
The promises of well-behaved children and angels of smooth,
Skipping stone.