The Steady Rain Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The paled hearse drives down
The way of her spine
After closing time;
Her lips are sealed like an
Envelope sent to a dream
Stamped like red wine;
The dollhouses of lonely granddaughters
Line the looming countryside,
And carriage-less young boys straddle the opal
Fences to see the $1.99 colonnade,
The single toy pushed by his feathering hands, carrying
The model death inside;
A balsam coffin for a plastic bride;
To which the absence of little girls
Stare out from the pearly driveways,
Her thighs’ quivering neighborhood;
Inside her body, she is transformed into a doe
Hunted by the aristocracy of easy men;
Hemmed down to the sea of drool,
She changes into a pewter eel with patina of eerie rose;
Then the hearse pulls up to the cemetery of weeping-willows,
And waits in the cul-de-sac of her nape,
As outside it begins the steady rain.