Their Muses' Glories Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The airplanes speak to me like
Lions evaporated into
Their ragged circus: theirs is a joy of much
Fertility—
Virile from the stewardesses they swallowed
Inside them,
Each of them living as if in an opalescent
Estuary,
Each one in harmless pieta,
A tea party in the belly of a wave
That knows the night
Cast in his sling across the waves:
The homeless men, on-lookers,
Holding up their empty cans like hungry
Instruments begging
For even a pittance of their muses’ glories.