In Her Vast And Burnished Soul Poem by Robert Rorabeck

When I take my first taste of liquor,
Something moves; it could hardly be expected
With my dogs breaking wind, snuffing the
Smells of my liquor;
I am as if in the tilting whirl of the carnival,
You know, who the steady buzz of big brass lights,
The carnies know- they have the same dreams;
They can go anywhere, as long as there’s
No where to go: Around, and around, and around,
Repeating the words to sound ridiculous,
Still knowing there’s an even better foul mouthed
Vocabulary in the libraries of the university
Cropped near the sea- The stone women, the
Atolls which arise enmeshed with the bellies of
Cherubic nimbus: Societies on the move,
Spinning out their old- I fell in love with her eyes,
But now I have to swear they were fool’s gold;
And I am here now, spinning, spinning
Repeating words and heady, because I’m about to
Taste my first dropp of really cheap soda pop;
Daddy- And the carnival is built up next to the balmy
Eaves of scrub pine and palm trees. Flipping our
Heads back like cans uncorked, we can see up the skirts
Of the girls across the canal leaping like lime-green
Fauns on the teal tennis courts: Girls we used to love,
And on and on, Diana we worshipped in the suburban
Gardens of our backyards; and finishing real quick,
Like the quickness of a song, or the vacillations of
This migrating show, then if I’ve done my job the sensation
Will linger and skip, like something tiny and alive
And yearn, ululating like cheap soda pop in her vast
And burnished soul.