Higher Up And Purer Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Lights through the brambles,
Old homes and overturned wagons:
Where have all the airplanes gone,
And why did you have to write
That you like football,
Because now I know you have all your better
Men, your chotskis and heirlooms,
Even though I don’t know who you took to the
Prom,
And you dress all in black while your bush your
Toboggan down the main street,
And all the people looking at you consider you
Casually beautiful,
And they don’t have a problem with you,
But they are just tourists:
They belong in the back of taxis where they
Won’t stop talking:
They have never seen the summit of my luxurious
Mountain,
Higher even now than the naked aspen in their
Wide open woman’s locker room:
Where you belong signaling airplanes like a fire engine
Steaming against my back
Milking the star-beams, catching the entire hay barn
Alight,
The fabulous momentum for the ellipses of all these circular
Objects,
These sports of fine young gods:
Something that is impossible not to believe in.
Rubbing two sticks together I capture you for a moment in
A moving picture,
And it was how I evolved,
And loved you higher up and purer than any other man
Yet living.