The Next Day Comes Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Licked a little rum
Off the fingers of humming birds,
Wanting more,
A little more genius as bright as newly minted
Pennies,
With the face of a president, made out of the
Same worthless stuff:
And this morning will be cold, and Diana will come
Rolling out of the woodwork,
And you can barely even speak to her even though
She thought you were cute two months ago
For a speck of pleasure, for a tryst.
And you will think of one or two muses in the world,
And it will do you no good:
You will uncover the plants and turn them upright
Like your father showed to you,
Making them bask in their hoods.
The angels will come like giant airplanes or other Horatio-Alger.
The traffic will conduct a steady tempo of the most intelligent
Mammals you know, or
Can think off, farting heartily in the air-conditioning;
And you will look up once or twice into that
Beautiful January sky of this new year,
Supposing it is the lightest shade of blue where more
Industrious and clever boys than you are always leaping and
Dying like minnows battling tadpoles in sunlit shadows;
And you will want to say her name and see her like spokes
Passing out of the windows of a school bus;
But you will not say her name. You will not sing for the
Police,
And when the next day comes, you will swear to hardly think of
Her at all.