Robert Rorabeck Poems

When they make love through the strings of catgut underneath
The power lines-
I don’t suppose either of them ever wore roller skates or
Ever flew in airplanes:
...

Imposes on an empty room-
A bouquet of parked cars, echoes from
A parking lot-
Other promises the moon steals- pretty
...

In the school:
Echoes of bleach- pitifully superficial
Holocaust
Of adolescent fanfare the busses bring here:
...

Chasing through the parks of the beaver and the
Bear,
Chasing through the aspens, where the young hearts fire
Like roman candles
...

Up in the angel morning with their
Kissed:
Frying like eggs, soaring like bacon:
And above the clouds,
...

Weren’t there poets before there were words,
Cause didn’t they need love in the boreal eras of moose and rime-
My brothers, the grandfathers of her eyes of sad prehistory;
When her shoulders are naked opal on the stereoscopic hills:
...

The dream in the enigma
Of unmolded sound,
Passing through the lips
Of the bullhorn
...

I write this every time and visitors they come
And laying fawn in the sun;
And the traffic is behind my head, but where are
The conquistadors and the things that they must have done:
...

A little bit of perfume after the sun goes down—
That is when the jasmine spring their wares onto empty
Trees—white hearts that cats look up to,
Buds of corsages for boys no bigger than toy trucks—
...

Maybe if Erin had discovered a baseball diamond in
Time and had learned to love the resuscitates of taking things off
In the choking redness of the earth,
Of covering the fullness of her breath with sleeping ants and
...