The Moon's Admirer Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Who can say where the weather goes
When it leaves this house, it jumps over
The rafters: an octogenarian,
An old hurdler,
Who has practiced all his existence
To touch the glowing belly of the lonely
Satellite:
The woman he saw casting her eyes
Through his window
While he was a teenager.
Then, young and eager, he still prayed
And faithfully competed for her,
And thought that by graduation she
Would know him,
And the secret roads he ran on through,
Where, between the interludes of clouds,
She cast her light down like scattered seeds
To feed the exhausted birds
Famished from trying to swallow her
Opulence to feed their young,
The chirping existence swaying in
The tall Australian Pines.
Before he knew, he was sure of his path and
Let her light radiate his shadow,
The ever faithful soldier following the
Body wherever there are doorways
Through light to follow—
He would cross small bridges over canals,
Where alligators swam like lazy gentleman
And lapped at the silver saucer of her eyes.
There she was, dancing patiently in the sky,
Through her seasons,
The waxing and waning maiden that knew
The world before he existed,
Yet came every night to swim in
Cloudy pools over the sleepy green neighborhood.
How was he to know then that she gave
No more thought to him, than the sun
Gives to men as he sits laughing on the
Wings of an airplane.
For her, he was just a pale ant running
Across the hills of his landscaped mound.
She did not know he was trying to catch her,
As her mind was already set upon a long and
Shivering prospect
Dressed in the shedding tailcoats
Like a revolutionary horseman
Who still comes calling to her with
The charms of a liberal politician.
And even further out, there was a red
God the sometimes came blushing
Onto her horizon.
Now an old veteran, like the north wind
Rattling the windows of a farmhouse,
He learned some years ago that
She would never come down to meet him,
Though she would forever glow
At night and thoughtlessly tease him;
But he is not bitter, for his
Futile love for her taught him to
Jump and leap all the higher,
As now he goes skipping through
The highest branches of slash pine trees,
Blowing like a tropical storm over
The tip of South Florida
High enough that when he bounds
He can see the ever gesturing ocean,
Another desperate gentleman long
Shackled by gravity who is still
Affected by her immortal attraction.