Schoolyard's Stormy Vestiges Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If it stormed again this afternoon,
I could go back to delivering pizzas-
But they’ve torn down that part of the world
Right near the University nobody knew me in.
I worked beside a cup-bearing goddess
Who I recalled from high school,
And remember getting drunk in the extinct pastures
With my boss who was already married
And reciting of her beside the ungodly apartments,
Everyone else tucked into parties for the night,
Except for the lesbians stripped naked and echoing
In the brightly scarred pool-
I could go back there again, given the opportunity:
I could go all the way back up the root of Loxahatchee,
Sleep into noon in some corrugated trailer underneath
The Australian Pine trees,
Fish in my own secret pond, take my catches to bed
With me, singing how god is the creation of man-
And when he walks out of the liquor store,
His boots made out of the last reptilian vestiges of the
Garden of Eden, his weary father knows to
Step aside and wait for the afternoon rain showers
And talk shows,
Because his son has resurrected and gotten a
Haircut, and kissed the pretty lady inside her car
Before work;
And now he is bicycling beside the new dorms
And all the freshmen are looking down thoroughly
Tranquilized from their uncertain windows:
For we have made a better man. Assured to graduate in
A few years, and then down south again at a good job
Defending the law, or brightening teeth:
So this is the way he goes, not a hint of returning coffins,
About the burning red schoolyard I used to know.