How It Happens Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Now it happens that I drink good rum:
Burning like a fire in a forest emblazed by the sea:
Losing all of my numbers, and the ways to go home:
My good dog licking my face,
And all of the silent prayers erasing the features of her
America:
And then we go home, anyways: we luxuriate in her shadow,
While our dogs bask in the sea:
And I have been thinking about her anyways, even after
The fireworks have all been lighted off,
And the words go home to new mother, talking to themselves
Over milk and scuppernongs:
While then the electronic hallucinations talk and whisper over
Themselves,
Making their own way home after super, precluding the smacking
Lips of the wolves:
And it all has to happen for a little while, anyway, underneath
The overpasses,
Presupposed by the pedestrians, but walked upon them anyways:
It all has to happen as a kite unmanned by its brother:
The rainbow slipped from her mother’s bosom:
The scars on my chest- the way to file at taxes:
The losses into the sea: the losses into the sea, anyways- I go,
Anyways- this is how it happens to me.