Exhibition Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Constant rain provides the atmosphere
Where even lions cry,
Dripping on the iron bars of their capture,
Their muzzles also wet from their domesticated
Kills,
Just as the lonely women stare out from their
Kitchens in the winnowing dusk of green landfills:
See that the moon has affixed to the obscurity
Of the storm, and their father isn’t home
To light the candle,
Though their children are seemingly warmly glued
To talk shows precluding their primetime t.v.,
And out in the yard the pine trees shiver as they
Are frisked by the drippy wind,
And unfortunately seeded in the places they might
Not wish to bed,
Extending the woods into the driveways of
Special handles;
The rain slicks the doors of automobiles,
The tourist flesh, the warm transportation now killed,
For their husbands are not at home,
But out searching for gold under the flooded hills
Until they become the barons of this menagerie,
And cannot go home anymore because it is no longer worth
It, just as the thunder exonerates the lion’s roar,
For fear of truer tears in the places of their false preservation.