Broken Glass Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Broken for so long without any glue,
Like glass on the short arch of the bridge leading home:
The color is beautiful but dangerous to touch,
For it has been hording sun, and the edges are sharp:
Down stream in the insouciant evening,
Where almost every color mingles, and otters,
And alligators, the vivacious foxes in the shallows courting
Water moccasins, their young’s red feet tracking
Playful mayhem in the loose anthills,
Cords of wood floating in blue clouds of sleepy midges.
The lights are coming on from the little houses amidst the trees,
But I cant still go home, for I am shattered though cooling.
How her eyes lied to me across the street in the classroom,
How my skin failed her in the moment our souls would touch.
The delicate breathing of the quieter things, the fruit
Bats who come out in a cycloning math from the plate of
The bridge, the bicycles which ride by frantically,
The skunk which lingers, the turtles which bobber like
Molasses in the darkening cools; but none of this she’ll ever see,
For she is in a home across the way being fed by her mother
Who is on her third glass of wine, answering innumerable
Phone calls for her daughter, afraid they will distract her
From the homework and the game shows which like company;
The moon is out and she is bleeding the silk which traps the nights,
And the bridge is in the crickets’ orchestras, and
I am all alone watching a cottonmouth move the fluting reeds
Like a slight gentleman.