Kindergarten Tears Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Easily I die into the poem of her lips,
The stains on her cheeks from her addiction to flowers-
Let us say the light opens, hosannas,
They molest for hours on the cinderblocks leading
Up to the chin of the moon,
I sit and watch them and peal like a cat, but I only
Have a nickel to buy what mother insisted,
I only have an hour for the show,
And then I must walk you home down the dirty
Road lined on either side by football players,
And alligators, and the girls who move naked through
The sprigs of aloe. There is a girl I once knew
Carnally driving up in a fine automobile,
Finished with her day, she walks upstairs to her husband.
I wonder what they’ll say,
And later on in a bar an angel with clipped wings,
A song bird who doesn’t care, laughs away the hours
And nocks out farts, and plays darts,
But onward we must go, and cross the busy intersections
Until our feet float over the pavement scarred with
Chalky games, and kindergarten tears,
But do no fear, do not fear, for the gates are swinging
Open to this yard, and it has been so long since you
Or I stepped home,
So easily I die from the poem of her lips,
But you are holding my hand, and the door is open and
The house rises before the lake like palms in prayer,
And then the dark’s affluence ripples and ripples without a shore.