The Grumblings Of Their Motors Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Up in the heady atmosphere where the stewardesses
Nuzzle the tourists
As soft as grizzly bears; where, evaporated, the wolves
Run the highways looking for a trick:
The road kill their silent tears; and they are making something
Above the sea:
Looking down, gilding the soft vessels that cannot help
But to swim over and so near the cathedrals of
Ferris Wheels;
Down at their ankles pretty girls kiss boys named Jim-
And it is like the enraptured but mostly villainous honeymoon
Of evolving truants- near the dog tracks, under the boardwalks:
Where the conquistadors used to live, but whose crosses
And bandoleers
Now have mingled in with luckless roses,
Tossed by the charioteers and bus drivers back into the sea
That is always galloped by some salacious mermaid or another,
While the selkies bathe with seahorses,
And the clouds gather in the consumptive foyer like a waiting
Room of wounded patients praying there
Above the spume of salt and tears, and the grumblings of their motors.