A Quick Poem Done In Time Poem by Robert Rorabeck

In the amber woods, the beetles call-
The rain falls upon the school.
The cats and the children awaken from their sleep;
Their eyes awaken to the moon-
My children alone know the spells
The rewind the mollusks into their shells,
Upon the soft, smoothed stones.

A stolen twilight plays across the backyards
Of the middle of America
And her graves:
Even the dead look beautiful in the middle of the night,
With all of the schools closed for the Summer;
And water falls upon the flatlands,
Curling from the busted lip of Michigan.

This is the last verse we shall remember,
Before we have to awaken and go to school tomorrow:
Look at our acne- the fairies with wounded wings
And the would be starlets who are wounded
In the heart moving in a homeless exodus to
Hollywood:

And Disneyworld-
And Disneyworld-
Above her paper dungeons, there is a listing kite in the sky:
Blinded school boys who are done playing their videogames
Gape and mew to look up at her-
The lamentations of wordless sitcoms fallen into their wide
Open eyes-
The castle they look upon is a piñata made of chicken-wire:

Therein lives the giant of their catastrophe,
A rotund bachelor extended from classical times,
He catches stewardesses as they fall,
And handles them above his fires: the parking lots of
Their skies are alight from the confounding thefts of gasoline:
And the emollitions of their thefts spread twenty feet
Above the suffering peninsulas where we advertise tourists to their beliefs.