A Smile You Had Never Seen Before Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Like the dissected rainbow of abused starlets
Like the beginning or the end of my misappropriated
Hope
That I cannot see the outcome for, and yet the sea
Is certainly some busy yard of beautiful graveyard and nursery:
And my parents are going away,
And as I jogged alone for you, I saw the first happenstance of
A prism leaping like a colorful gazelle from the asphalt:
And my mother couldn’t do any better than loving my
Father,
And I love you this way, like a gagged symphony, like the last
Stripes of a fish who knows she will not survive even while
She bares her young to the unthoughtful spectacles of the
Deep,
As you bared yourself for me maybe for the last time,
As I lamented the loss of the tall swing sets
And then I brushed your lips and yours to mine in the hidden
House beside the albino alligator who seemed to smile
Up at us a smile you swore to me you had never seen before.