The Fields That Are Burning Down Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Unreal vision of a hard day’s heart:
Separated from my family, a rattle snake at birth—
Greatest delusion with only so many words
To settle the crepuscule over the mailboxes,
To put the foxes and the playboys into their dens
Until there is finally dusk
And Sabbath—where the king cobra unflasks,
And unjewels—and you lie in a bed with him
Of brown stems your children bawling around you—
When even in that coffee night,
The flamingos send seashells into the air—
And above the ocean floats the sounds of naked alleys
And the wings hoping there the empty sounds
Of footsteps that never touched the ground—
As heaven floats above your bedroom,
Never making a sound—the same way you make with
Him—the fields that are burning down.