Your Never Mind Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I try to line up words for you
Glass bottles filling with sunlight
On the fence, rows of speckled birds
Who I have taught to sing your name,

You write me on my birthday,
A couple distant words the snake into my heart,
And once or twice you glance across the crackling fields
Down to where I have caught afire and dancing—

You slant you head as if trying to figure something
Out, and your blue hair falls like waves upon
Your neck’s opalescent trunk,
But too soon men in red trucks drive around your porch,
Hollering your name like sledges nailing train trestles.

Distracted by the tautness in their young smiles,
You go away with them too soon as not to see
The tremendous blaze I have ignited myself,
And all of a sudden I am consumed and lost
In the cluttered and rusting backyards of your never mind.