The World Even Before Your School Day Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Green lakes underneath swing sets barren of
Apples,
Where I have moped and moped far along into the twilight
After the last plane has flown away, after the final
Beauty has parceled the field,
Or the last copper canon ball flown:
And you went up to school and made love,
While I kept on eating my lunch alone, and dripping my
Lines like a snail quivering for home,
Cutting paper into snowflakes to make a weather for your
Wherever town,
In syllables falling down between your knees, waiting for you
To salt, to go into the changing room of you mind and to
Remember to put on something truly beautiful;
And these words that wake up inside of me like a fire of
Celsius in a mailbox
Cannot be contained by mellifluous hands: by your father’s eyes,
Or the trucks of his carriage:
And I might go down with so many strikes against me:
I might even sleep unbeknownst in the penumbra of sunken
Stewardesses, even into the boudoirs of alligators; but at least
I gave it a shot so that you would know how to find me,
And who I was made by these welding thoughts of you;
And that I had swung just as cheerfully without any other
Thought in the world even before your school day had begun.