Halfway Home Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Up in their castles battling for air,
And not a single one of their beauty coming down
To bed me:
Me like a cormorant and the gulls a sisterhood in her
Bivouacked cathedral,
Her logic sweet- stolen from the apiary, and that a delusion of
The Ferris Wheel,
Turning around backwards on itself, molestations of
Sticky apples and other fruit
That will not heel:
Plymouths and flaming swords showing on the streets underneath
The palm trees,
The way that sometimes mermaids bask in the brine of daylit
Televisions, of teenage boys skipping school-
When, all of a sudden, it all feels out, looks lonely, and under
The hood- the plagiarism of all of those heavens,
Of empty baseball diamonds overlooked by witchcraft:
And me getting all of it, sad-footed on an empty lot,
Halfway home, out of school:
Wanting to kiss orchid in the canal, not wanting to say her name:
Bending over it, as if in acquiescence, but not going all of the way.