The End Of Humanity's Aspirations Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Any poem can start this way, or
The way the rain shower begins to caress the roof.
Slowly, there are less cars going about, and the
Palm trees’ dancing is blurred, and out past the lips
Of sand, the ocean is in a frothing ballroom;
The neighbor’s cat is draped in aloe, swatting the
Spotty moonlight in a dime of drool,
And little children like in picture frames know
Nothing but their dinner set before them,
And the laughing on the television; And the man
And woman at the table taking in eyes, and playing
Cards: here in the soporific meadows, grazing
Taxis come with visiting relatives, and I hide
Between them, the little light illumines my bedroom,
And with a bottle set before me, clasped before me,
I want to get drunk and hypnotized by this nonlethal
Storm, and pretend by the sway of gentilities to
Be beautiful, as my aunt steps out of the car-door
And approaches the stoop. Soon she will enter,
And shake off those drenched garments she has worn,
Slip like the littlest obscurity beneath the aquarium,
And sleep there while the rain resumes contagiously.
I quiver at her breathing, and read a line beneath the
Spider’s ostentatious spume, as a tram like some ancient serpent
Clacks its sparked teeth above the highest tenements of
The rundown neighborhood; by a little more shower
There should come a sea extended from the ocean,
A draping change, but the whole household is still asleep
As outside I imagine a sorority hurries by the window,
Clasped together by tassels and perfume, and above
The nodding aunt, a single eel weaves black and gallant,
Just a single eel, like a lost ribbon in the tank of water.
I wonder what it hears, and if it should understand that
The rain is gathering, moving the cat up floor by floor,
Waiting to enter and jettison the place with all its possessions,
And then, I should say, my aunt should float there in
Blocks of torpid current, the eel freed and lacing beneath
Her unconscious spine, until she should awake carried
Far into the stretching forest beneath the spire of a woodland
Church, such a symbol appropriate for the
End of humanity’s aspirations.