In That All Too Obvious Repose Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Time clocks me in and gives me new scars,
Which repel women’s glances; but it is fine, as
They are married and motherly and finely suited.
They belong in parks, muddled by pastels, necks
Like vases housing water lilies with odors and
Perfumes, how they stream home from there in such
A sorority that espousing their element I become over
Zealous, spill my enjambment into only this stanza,
Forget about revisions and the hangdog natures of the
Professors I. In fact, call my cuckolded by them, mystified
In their suburban parks where even they never go, but
Fan about in their cars and hearses given over to their
Once lovely grandmothers, shopping into graveyards stood
Up with horns of tin and plastic bouquets of blue bells and
Glass roses which start forest fires under the sun on the dry
And mowed grass. Eat up entire oaks, and deciduous natures,
Burn up ant mounds. The fire licking, tries to crawl up her
Leg like a mewling kitten, tries to franchise her, but she is
So subtle, and hollow like a flute the piper blows and her
Lips are quivering under the mistletoe foaming with eggnog
Even then all out in the open on some prepubescent Christmas
Day; and she only has the idea for tattoos. Thus the sun wreathes
Her as the traffic goes, and she stands there in and amongst all
So many rows, like a canary, like a distillation of her womb,
Until turning away from my fumbling, turns to the winning team
And unbuttoning her blouse, has her lips drool, and is soon tight
Into him in that all too obvious repose.