The Other Awakening Gifts Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Feeble day on the cusp of a dying wing:
I cry for you as you melt into the trees,
And I try to figure you out:
Why I was born in the yellow hypnotism of you
Dinner table,
Or why I take an airplane up to see you at
Eye level,
And how the sun comes down from you
Like Ferris wheel losing
All control- and my dog barks up into you,
And pants in the sweats of your
Job,
And the rattlesnakes, and the kittens-
And the paper boats who dissembark into you-
As you go down
Across the mermaids in their Spanish grottos,
As my mother does the laundry one more time
In the carport of the house we don’t live
In anymore-
As the kidnapped girl falls asleep up in
The tree behind our house
She doesn’t live in anymore- and you melt
The sherbet over a knife, or a weeping birthday cake:
There you go into the shadows,
Giving us wolves and the other awakening gifts
Of your stolen light.