Up The Alley's Open Chimney Poem by Robert Rorabeck

These windows out to seas are no good-
They have fogged up,
Or turned away:
Nobody says I am beautiful anymore;
And the lighthouse has tripped a fuse.
There are so many things to consider, walking
Alone in the dark, biting my lip,
Trying to ignore how easily the heavens are
Smothered;

The dogs have left my side- They are
Dividing up the streets to keep their prospects
From other dogs, but they are lazy:
They do not wake as the shepherd steps
Over their flea-bitten manes with his flock a-braying,
And soon all of such wealth has floated away
Like so much rusted flecks up the alley’s
Open chimney:
And though the oysters are dancing,
There is nothing left worth fighting;

And she has gone down the wet stones to make
Love to the sea- She has done this with the deliberation
Of an unsatisfied lover,
Waiting for the moon to breach from cover
And wax over my hand, to distract and palaver:
And now when all the lights are out and every
Essential family is slowly breathing,
She leaps naked into his white comb,
And thus swims coyly away like
A somnambulist of that caesura’s
Golden foam,
With two guiltily satisfied hearts a-beating.