Just Another Catastrophe Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Westernly and bold, as if fireworks being shot
Down from the stars that are skirt
In the pinpricks that freckle the highway in a
Heavenly zoetrope of lush but
Bashful girls who live there: right up there:
Over your shoulder, and over the mailboxes too:
They live in the heavens because they do not know
What else just to do:
And the airplanes drive in their neighborhoods
Bringing them a sorority of stewardesses, for them
Like dolls to play with, and their houses
Are always moving along with the continents:
If they had horses up there they would ride them:
And when the comets come once ever few years,
They do ride them:
And they think much of nothing, and they stir
The shadows of the clouds to look at visions
Though they do not even think to try and conjure
The faces of the men staring up at them and wondering
Who is really there. Each man is a teardropp that
Has already fallen from them, and grown into
A life of sorrow that they will not permit-
Sorrow is just another catastrophe to say to nothing,
But the swans get close enough to imagine their
Beauty, before they have to dive down again
Into a world that is envious of them- while they
Are envious of another world.