Child-Land Of A Place That Has Moved On Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Kindergarten of muses, of tinker-toys:
Little girls on the sherbet rug,
Pulling up day dreams, already know who
They are going to marry- Premature
Leave-alone,
I am outside on the swings, censering like a
Smoky bishop in a pointy hat:
I can only move diagonally this way and
That underneath the slash pines.
My mother’s cold noodle soup makes me
Want to throw up-
I want to kill that queen, but will have a hard
Time at it,
Lollygagging, Shetland ponies, collecting shells
On the west coast of Florida,
Pensive on Sharon, and I am already so old:
Look at the cereus, look at the dog show:
Pantomimes leaping on the half shell of airplanes:
Sharon beats them all,
Beautiful bone structure, tan as a pearl,
Baking her cake in the kitchen of a house of cards;
And I am just about no one all dressed up
To leave for the moon-
The day is almost over, my lips and hands covered
Only with mud,
My little sister weeping to be with me-
The pine trees weeping houses down through their
Lees;
And I don’t know Sharon,
But there is her sun crinkling through the lilac trees,
Already baking my prepubescent pottery;
Pretty soon mommy and daddy will come for me,
And I will get to dream of her more
Into the corners of darkness- spiders looming about
The refrigerator,
Giant teddy-bears stolen from the trash;
And all of us wanting her, wanting the first rounds of
A child-land of a place that has moved on
That will not exist.