Perfume Poem by Robert Rorabeck

A great well crafted sting,
Folded in the pages of a butterfly:
Where the sea rises and breathes
In the afternoon of epiphanies,
Far away from the pines who are singing,
Because even though they have
Never seen you, they believe:
I sat amidst them and watched
The shadows craft the dying carpet,
And whispered of my love,
The sailing break of waves,
The undulations that go perfectly uncontained:
These stalwart men,
These bowered sentinels,
Breathing in ways you cannot know,
Watch my language go off like fireworks,
The cart wheeling performers out of caves,
The stilted jesters lisping tunes,
The jack-in-the-box out of tombs:
We sat together like conspiring minors,
Under the forgotten walkway of the grown-up world,
And bowed as the wind came to us
In whispers of your slicked limbs,
The strut of abdomen sliding back the door,
Getting out of the shower
And blooming in your evening’s room:
I tell them you smell like saltlick and cinnamon,
And your eyes are the haunted fires of hungry men:
I tell them better poets could contain you
In their potions, and I only hold the slightest notion,
Of the ways and avenues
That you come stepping towards us out of shattered gloom;
But you must not disappoint them,
As they are rooted in the eternal open,
And I have become nothing but the
Scattered bones about them, waiting for your
Entrance, as the winds scent us
With your perfumes.