The Permanent Dream Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Infrequently the heart mingles:
Pulsates like a basin giving off code:
Here her eyes mix with something
Obscured:
Down beneath the fractured surface,
There could be a precious hope,
But to disturb the water would
Set her to flight:
Imbibing, she is calmed, and remembers
Days when the sun slid in the grass:
Her family’s caravanning
As they entertained the known world,
The pinwheel of lights juxtaposed
Against the steadfast ether-
The places where laughter existed for awhile, but
You cannot capture her here,
For this is an amphitheatre to come and observe,
Where the philosophies of beauty rest on stones
And if you set one finger on her sensitivities,
She will leap away and never again be seen:
She will disappear in the storm
of the world awakening,
And become the fiction on the tongue,
Debased: she will flight from bed to bed,
Unrecurring to every man:
If you touch her now, as is your wish:
To sink beneath the bucket’s gentle glimmer,
In hopes of grasping the permanent dream,
She will disappear
And you will have destroyed
What you came for.