Fleeting Appreciation Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Butterflies going back to Mexico
Put new poison in my body:
Just going back over the absentee borders,
Beating their wings until they come
Up with new numbers over the shadowing abysses
Until you don't know where to
Find them:
They have only gone to kiss the knuckle-bones of
Their dead grandmothers,
And then to die plated by the rain in the hillsides of
Corn:
As they become paramours of the ashen storm,
As the hurricanes halo the volcanoes,
To warm kisses of their own lovers take over
Their bodies,
And that is when your eyes bloom up from
The graveyards, to retrieve thoughts I have given you
Underneath the playboy sun:
Letting my own ochers run down your lucid tributaries:
Showing off your apiaries budded upon my
Fingertips and tongue:
And as those thoughts of our lovemaking dye like
The poisonous aspects of butterflies over the graveyards
Of your ancestors in the nameless town of
Your upbringing, I hope you think of me as well as find
Some fleeting appreciation for the songs I have always sung
For you.