The Neighborhood's Fata Morgana Poem by Robert Rorabeck

My legs are crossed and cooling on
Some promontory in Arizona:
I’m almost as big as a hill, a tit-
And the traffic goes by as smooth as ants;
Listening to the perfectly rounded mouths
Of radios;
Made softer by air-condition; each one
A pet-
And I’ve forgotten who I am;
I think there should be a sea beneath Arizona
Instead of Mexico- I think there once was
And dinosaurs and vampires:
Now look at the shopping mall shimmering the
Neighborhood’s Fata Morgana;
And I don’t know what I should eat-
The hummingbirds are too quick, and of course
They are such little meat-
The pretty boys in their towns somnambulating
Around,
And the girls are all done with me- Even the
Pretty ones- I don’t think they’ll call again, but I
Wonder still if they’ll read my poetry,
Or skip school with me to see the tiny world of
Dolls atop the roofs of the chicken coops of lawyers
And their dolls;
But she probably doesn’t know what a roman candle
Is; she just likes the taste of wine,
And when the sky is like a soup matriculating across
The elbows and joints of the mountains she can see;
Then she might know who she is,
She might read my poem, even though she’s
Forgotten me.