For A Place To Land Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Hands in my own yard—little boy's hands underneath
The banners and castles of a paper tree—
Doing his afternoon delusions into a pit of bonfires:
Burning his toys again,
As his father kills the snakes in the garden,
And piles them up with the help of a Mexican—
Pinecones and palm fronds, a bier for the greatest
Illusion of a king—and where is my mother?
In the carport? In the Laundromat?
The lilac amphibians are singing underneath a
Rhinoceros moon—in the beautiful séance of
A crepuscule cartoon—and I loved you as each bud
Pearled into a fruit—
And the moon beamed down on the cloven hoofed
Satyrs playing their lutes—
As I lit off fireworks, and watched the serpents
Sipping gin—I remembered that very soon we'd
Be selling fireworks again—
And the pine cones whispered in the boughs,
As the palm fronds gathered in the sand—a stolen bicycle
Slipped across the earth—a wayward airplane searched
For a place to land.