Dénouement Of The Empty Theatre Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I think I would like a house with an orange tree,
And neighbors who never grow old,
And laugh and kiss openly on the patio;
Already retired, now they drink beer and smoke,
And gossip over their highly successful children.
There should be dunes across the street,
And swaths of trees, who sing after midnight,
And keep the secrets that they touch, the rivers
Underground, the better words my tongue has
Yet to tell my mind. And I would work
Part time for places my parents had never eaten
At, and make deliveries in short order, with nothing
More complicated, attending to my rock garden
And sleeping with my dogs, take up smoking.
I would lay on my landlord’s roof, and remember the better
Times I tried out, and the offices in beautiful white
Lines over the canal. I would swear off reading
Better poets, men with minds as sharp as ceremonial
Weapons, who have already pinned the eyes of
Virgins and flight attendants,

But this will not happen, and in two months I will
Drive to South Florida and sell trees in a failing economy.
I should never go back to college, less I destroy the
Idiocies of my nostalgia, and I should never see her again
The way she sleeps in the arms of bodybuilders, my words
Too dull to kill or wake her up; but I should be outside for
Awhile, and I have enough money to pay my bills,
And steal away at night when the sky is beautiful and smells
Of citrus blooming on the better pages of flowering ingénues
With genius grants and succinct phrases which honey
Her lips, so that they make her swoon,
And take her home long before she
Could hear this final line.