Before You Fly Away Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Ubiquitous, salty women
Tremulous through the highway of souls:
Why do I keep on doing this
For you,
Sweeping out the theatre no one attends.
Then at night,
I can be either man or woman for you;
I can be an airplane running with my dogs free-flowing
Through the woods.
I have no occupation, but for your love,
For it gives me summits and lightning in clear
Blue vases of sky;
And, didn’t you used to paint, long tongued-
Didn’t you used to own the high school of fire-drills and
Blonde boys, like me;
And I got drunk swilling ripple in bathrooms:
I could barely look at myself, but now I am almost
Beautiful;
And how many hands did you need to count your
Boyfriends, I don’t know;
I got lost one holiday driving out to the airplane club,
Thinking I should like to leap nearer where you
Live,
Where the greater men keep you in their gilded nimbus;
And how many children you’ve had by them,
Growing on vines in drunken ennui,
I don’t know- but would like to hold you in my hands for
Awhile, and revel in your crests and sloughs,
And tell you the names of hypothetical children I would
Like to have by you before you fly away.