The Day That Was At Hand Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Great and churlish ennui this is your vision:
To be overthrown like a bird nest from a Christmas tree
In a thunderstorm:
To make love one time with a dog who is
Homeless because he once stepped aside for
A terrapin going down to the water fountain for
A drink:
And, yes, you remember her eyes: her eyes were hers,
Sometimes for you, sometimes for another man,
And the sun broke out of its yoke
And made a breakfast of the land-
Into some estuaries egrets flew, but they were not
The colors of your flag, and you held your
Head in your hands and wept
As she drove home to the soft and cooling colors
Of another man- she slept in the fjord of
A rainstorm holding the banners
Of an overcast day- and sometimes she made love to you,
Even though you were away selling fireworks
In New Mexico, as from the ovens of her uterus
Her children grew and grew:
And they stretched arms like cedars and went to school,
And thought to plans of what they could do-
So finally she bent the stream, ran to rivers of her
Nocturnal dreams- she loved her father when he wasn’t home,
But otherwise across the deserts her love roamed
Into chicken coops and spider webs,
Stealing eggs and reading dregs- as the waves
Broke and birthed her home- opened eyed, and in foamed
Perfumed- she awakened in her awakened room,
And thought of you as she kissed her man,
When out and her young brown body greeted the day
That was at hand.