To Profit From Your Return Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Imperfect whispers beneath my eyes,
Words like the tongues of monsters kissing between
The thighs,
Wanting to swap meet with you, handy and cruel,
In lies since kindergarten; but the sky in autumn gave
You better romance:
Children and new cars and church:
You propositioned your boss in a lurch, but you
Married the cousin of far away.
When I was functional, and had a girlfriend,
We named our cat after you- She didn’t even know.
Eventually she married and ran away and got together
With her lost tribes and made out in law school-
Thus on and on, like the lyrics of a merry-go-round,
And the cat was eaten by coyotes,
I bedded all the waves that I could, but I was never good
At science except what came before all of this history,
The path of words that might have led me through the hills
Of Christmas trees where the dragon was sleeping with
All my friends, in the lost civilizations of junkyards;
It could have been an empirical victory, but I couldn’t understand
How to carry you around with me, a miracle that was always
Changing- You were like so many other girls when thrown
Up into the sky, what you turn into has wings
And definite migratory patterns, and you leave me in the bright
Lights which you know aren’t real,
Spinning, spinning, with no hope to profit from your return.