The Slithering Of Speechless Vertebrae All Through The Mowed Grass Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If I want to lay down and sleep like
A well published author, sated by my moribund
Of words, if not beautiful,
Will you place your bet on me and lie down
Beside me and make eyes at this poor sap?
I wish you would, because I am exhausted beyond
Belief, greeting each family as they come in boyishly
Grinning, concerned and ready to haggle:
I’ve loved the draw of your legs since high school,
And how your skin speckles like a well-fed fish in a shallow
Pool.
Though I do not know anything about you, I would
Take you piggy-back across the everglades, and steal
Into the cane fields and suckle on those stalks with you,
And watch you take off your shirt and lay kitty-corner
To the niggardly crocodile, grinning, grinning, but
Not knowing what for, not grinning as I should grin to
Be within your vicinity, and beneath the cloudless sly
Against the hedge across from which the traffic roars, but
Not being seen by any of it, just our eyes upon us, and those
Naked opalescent trunks: Oh so would I love you, this way?
And if this pittance of words is enough, then I have dreamed
Of you, and deceived my brain into thinking it was real just
By watching your foray laconically with your books and
Precious stems in the loci of that green lawn, and into the
Backyard strung out like diamonds on a lace, and the cypress
With its garland of shadows: seeing you there like a fresco
In open space, and appreciating you in the quieting cadence
Of the crickets, the slithering of speechless vertebrae all
Through the mowed grass.