The Nude Elements Of The Lamenting Plain Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Crippled deities condoned to flame,
Burning upwards is their game- this midway about them
Gets busy, teasing prizes-
And the panoply of lights gardening ride in their
Irises;
It becomes a noisy beauty toyed with until overused-
Trashed, it is quieted- as the tourists leave out in the night:
They will go with one another, holding hands
Until they disappear all together;
And there I will remain, wishing I was one of them,
Until the carnival that was once all around me
Is packed up into another rain
The teasing mechanisms folded like sheets- the simulacrums
Of its amusements of love’s overused pedaling
Eagerly quieted- abandoning all that I believed to the nude elements
On the lamenting plain
While the angels metamorphose into husbands of modest
Households, stealing away their housewives
And joining to the sky again-
Like the very airplanes which they find so richly amusing.