Where No Flowers Can Grow Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The parks fill with the cadmium lights on evil sparklers:
Underneath the phosphorous sin,
The phosphorating pinwheels of really American holidays,
I can see the innocence that hasn’t been banished,
And so I go to the other side of the park and am alone:
The swings have been removed, like the teeth of my love:
How will I ever eat a candied apple again,
How will I joust through the groves. Now in the light of day
My parents are coming over to see my new house,
But Sharon is still a young mother in Colorado: Listen to these
Airplanes gliding like self-aware rain, touching down just
As quietly as new lovers in a new bed,
While the peonies blossom underfoot in the cages at the zoo,
But they will soon be taken over by the cool semidarkness of
The banyans; but it is even more beautiful where no flowers can grow.