Boniface Shadows Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Boniface sanitariums, oh how I love you-
People who are in the next room over,
Live in a different world than I;
Sometimes the shadows turn like playgrounds,
Prehensile- Shushabye- Shushabye say the scars
Peeking in the sleek corners,
While outside what a world moves,
On long, gunning legs go by:
Young things move through a green space some
Darned gods molested into being just to
Captivate their truancies- Oh look at them go,
Not real enough to touch,
Fingers fall through them like steam rising-
Their thighs are steam highlighted by great blushing
Landscaping; but if they are dead then so
Am my- Mighty steam track trains coil through the
City- they’ve eaten everything, yet they still seem to
Be moving,
Shushabye, shushabye goes these trains through the
City of trains,
And her legs running like water over a place they never
Saw;
Down in stony clutch where other birds gather,
And I drive by as slowly as I can, slow enough to keep
A butterfly- but it is never enough: and then
On and on, never to see them again, but oh their lips,
As if the cradles for the ears of little children, sing:
Shush-a-bye, shush-a-bye