Heralded By Zeus's Lightning Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Heavens budded as roses to which the foxes
Are already leaping:
It is an easy thing to do already
While doorbell rings,
While the tortoises finally start out upon their
Race:
Whist I’ve been so long at touching myself
Underneath the misbelieving heavens,
And too soon it will be
Another Halloween,
And the skeletons will be altogether dancing:
And they will be handing out the sweets
Of vanished daylight underneath another
Banner of defeated heavens,
Because this is just the memory of the things that
All of humanity has already forgotten to do:
As I reached out to touch the last
Nuptials of whatever goddesses remained
In the nocturne of my bedroom
After all of the cartoons had turned out
And this just turned out to be another line strung out
Around a forest where my aunts made love
To foxes: and this was just the joy repeated
Underneath the rainstorms as the last of the latchkey
Children marched on home in mockery of the anthills
Underneath the paper trees and plastic army men
That, heralded by Zeus’s lightning,
Could hardly contain themselves.