Robert Rorabeck Poems

Driving to the east, driving home the sky was
As gray as gray rhinoceroses- I even drove past Alma’s
House,
And Alma’s roses, because she didn’t ring me all today:
...

So this is how the world works: bodies so brown and beautiful
Going about and fawning,
Making the world more beautiful, and you must have seen them
Diving through the red clays of the university,
...

I meant to say something beautiful, tossing the bottle up
To taste my lips,
While I thought I saw the coral snake underneath the trailer
Some weeks ago:
...

The rains are finally coming:
I can hear them coming so softly like a mute and polite sorority:
Listen to them footstep through the leaves,
And cast their little sadness atop the roof of cars,
...

I have driven past graveyards of 0live and fuchsia:
I have been down to Miami with my father to gather produce,
Before he had his toothache and he wasn’t
Always so angry:
...

The bodies spill over into bankruptcy and I wish I had
The time to express to you what opulent beauty your body caries:
Alma,
You are the paradox of all those cats on the fences:
...

Now I am really going anywhere:
My heart feels like it is at the fair for Alma,
And when she is gone then it feels as if time has stopped
And the sky bleeds over my grave:
...

Who do you think I am now that the night pedals,
And most of the shoppers are done;
And don’t you think it so sad, Alma, that I haven’t as of yet
Bought our bicycles,
...

All of it is imperfect, and I am almost home:
I have been found out to be a girl by the macho stags
With their machetes and flashing their grins
At all of their impossible wives,
...

The night weeps its sentiment to us all, but oh how
Many lines have begun like that:
And I wish I could be more original for you;
And now I want to walk to your house again:
...