Carelessly And Long Ago Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Seagulls on trams of busy rides;
And she has her new inconceivable family:
See how we all proceed, leaving like the migrations of
The fair,
Or the butterflies who move from pages to pages of
Fairytales;
But now they are all married and have silver slippers,
Or something new:
They can go anywhere, except they are as calmed as
Lions with their chalices:
See how the knights have returned with bushels full
Of pomegranates.
Some of them even made it past the flaming swords,
Some of them are still swinging upwards;
And the light is just the trick of starlets in coffins,
Still shining on through the zoetropes of movie theatres,
Like my love dancing in the shadows of the desert;
It is just the motion of families of cars reciprocating
With one another in far away neighborhoods,
Fully sated and off to bed, their light skipping somehow
Along the materials that also makes
The reptiles slither and quicken their tongues into the buds
Like beautiful women through the spines of the city
And into the defeated forts of vanities and wine racks,
Where tamed rivers flow like family pets,
Where lovers too can go, and be as becalmed as if everything
In the world was made of glass, and singing from
The echoes your fingers or your lips placed upon it
Carelessly and long ago.