Under The Loose Wheels Of The Cars Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Regaled in the energy of its clever
Turbines,
The city covets with the damp foreheads of
Its sunbeams:
These simulacra sit inside boisterous as
Humid ice-creams:
I don’t know that I must know that I have
Seen you
Through the transoms of these portholes,
Waiting out on your spot in the light of your yard,
Every inch of you ticking from rhyme:
I think I must have seen you after the rains had come,
And the city was as fancy as a
Newly minted dime at harvest time:
And there you was, and there you were,
Spinning in gaiety, but not spinning at all:
It was the look impregnated in your eyes as if I could have seen
Them:
You were starring on Broadway in the sticks in the weeds,
As you put talcum powder over your newborn’s crotch;
And you looked over across the fiberboard you
Mistook for the skies in Colorado;
You wept and the crowd roared,
Throwing bones and fireworks under the loose wheels of the
Cars.