The End Of This Thing Poem by Robert Rorabeck

E- says she’s jealous,
But she still watches her team of boys sweat,
Pumping the cherry iron of fire-engines
And corvettes:
And she has no time for me,
And somehow she doesn’t have to comb her hair:
Fair E- is just another constellation that
In some ways has time to
Pretend she cared:
And I helped her move more than a decade ago,
Where I loved her in the truancies of
My bent mind,
But I no longer believe in Eskimos,
And she’s already told me that I am not Robert Frost:
I am not Robert Frost,
But I skipped like a stone for two weeks
Across Saint Louis,
And I thought of her like a dog gnawing on my bone,
Until I was spent and ugly,
Like the ancient mint of an ancient penny:
Something almost worthless,
But in some small way still valuable,
Like a strange animal you might see jumping through
The clouds,
But not so unusual that your friend sunbathing topless
Beside you
Might not agree that she sees me as the very same
Thing you pretended to see me as,
As you didn’t care,
Erin:
You took my bouquets and f-ed someone else,
And you didn’t care,
And this is the end of this thing falling through the
Drinking fountains not very far
Away from our high school where you never really cared.