Into Her Yard Poem by Robert Rorabeck

In stems of light, her brown body breathing:
Something of an angel collected of itself, I know-
A windmill metamorphosed,
The spokes of a bicycle skipping away from school,
Portioning the gifts of the heavens for
Our sight:
Her brown skin perfect, moving with the egresses of
The otters who have learned some kind of
Fire,
And how to speak: who sleep on woebegone rafts
Underneath the low bridges,
Chattering of housewives to the water-moccasins;
And laying so that their bellies get some sun
In the afternoon long insouciance;
As my muse goes home to watch her novellas,
To eat her mother’s cooking,
Her clothes drying out on lines across the yard, as she
Lies into herself some more,
Reclining with her children, or the other more make-believe
Of creatures which I happen into her yard.