The Fables By Which She Fans Her Children Poem by Robert Rorabeck

How an infant forms words, I imagine,
Like eating its first snowflake abandoned in the
Empty yard,
Seeing only red and white where the cars are sleeping,
Remembering how its mother breastfed her
Every which way from Sunday,
And then picking the syllables out of the alabaster sky
Where the airplanes are loopy,
With eyes on their wings as they are beginning to
Touch down- Stewardesses giving valiant instructions
First to quarterbacks and thus to everyone else-
Yes, it’s the same way she will pick out furniture to
Surround her husband, cannibalized syllables which
At first taste very good to the just learning virgin;
At first unique, godly and feral, soon passed around and
Socialized, and sterile: She doesn’t think to imagine the
Finger prints on her sofa,
The stains on the bed secreted by the nocturnal bullhorns
Of overworked organs-
She comes down to the basement in straight lines,
And still I turn head over heals for her, poking my head through
The old fence in the backfield, looking in since I’ve been
Stealing cars
When she thought I was playing baseball:
the fables by which she fans her children:
Yes, everything good is beautiful,
And her lips walk the elliptical yards of their velveteen ears,
Teaching them how to melt the taste of snow, whispering
As she cleans the rooms,
What they already expected they would hear.