The End Of A Snake Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Poison at the mouth and at the end of
A snake:
Other ways on and out of a canyon that our
Teachers made us pretend to be
Real:
We will start off slow tomorrow:
Some birds will build their nests underneath
Their arrow planes—
Some bicycles will be stolen, and some lions will
Yawn when the housewives
Return home before their children in the busy boughten
Estuaries they become estranged in:
Outback of which the canoes will float just
As coffins:
And into the flickering dance of candles
Into which their children will come home estranged in,
Hapless and dancing:
So far from the groves of the poorer and working class
Children:
Where my muse lives—lighted up like a roman
Candle dancing beneath the catholic church
Until she is a single blue window too far away to see—
And my words have drifted away—she never has to
Worry about me—
When she awakens—what will she remember—
How will she dress herself—and when she hears the airplanes,
What will she hear, until she finally
Hears my wife returning home to me—and then, it wonders,
How will she ever go about returning home
To him.