How Happy I Am Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The gardens are so green, and culled by the road:
Hibiscus rises up and is breezed by the cars:
My parents used to make love in a Michigan trailer that
Crunched the backs of mitigated shells;
And the sea foamed and hiccupped and was a lush to the trees;
And there were days where this was nice, and I was just born:
My memory still not hardened from my mother’s
Loins,
Like purses of the lions that never grow cold: they stick out
Of the savanna and leap just like hungry fires;
And the road burns both ways, with kidnappers and lovers:
And I saw you coming or going, but you didn’t see me:
My mind was so young, but now it waits like a kite stuck in
Its tree,
While the dogs bark, and night takes over with its perfumes and
Transvestites, or the novels of vampires;
And you ride in your cusp, a blue wave like a chariot that stays
Busy brushing your flanks;
And you swell right through the pornographies of my world,
And the kids from yards and yards over crowd the fences as if at
A baseball game just to see how happy I am to see you.