Housewives Or Our Own Mothers Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This is true- that you are not here, and I am
Drinking,
And tomorrow I will have to go to school again
Building a pledge out of my body
And of my gut:
Distinguishing the gardens where I belong
Where the trees are busily in a topiary of a glass
Encased bower
Outside of which it rains and all of the sisters
You’ve forgotten lay trapped,
Or have escaped: because sometimes they enjoy it,
And sometimes they want in:
Sometimes they come baring fire, and sometimes
I watch them kiss snakes who caracole the rock
Garden or other places that I cannot
Spell,
And I linger at the windows of my box, and drink
To new liquor while I inquire of the borders
Of the canals
And railroad tracks, and wonder what it would
Mean to cross them and to become a part of that
Other world, glowing in the strange vertigoes
Who resemble the pallid cadavers runaway in a park
Underneath the regresses of airplanes
With the stewardesses climbing down or calling from
The perfectly spherical windows as if they
Were housewives or our own mothers assuring us
That they would soon be on their way home.