Like A Vermillion Errol Flynn Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Can’t clean where you’ve already started
The cut,
The hari-kari, the great amount of sea-shells;
Or when the little girls step in from the beach,
Smelling like salty confections,
What could you even say to them,
Imaging how you do the brush strokes of storm clouds
Put in over the beach they only left minutes ago
When the full day was out;
But to settle down now into the misfit’s yard
Would be a sort of tragedy at the dusk of youth.
Imagine rather, that there is still time to be a student
With all the fine elements of this country being
Shot down the tank. I can’t think of a better thing;
Or, being that you can’t write or spell or
Fix your hair like a vermillion Errol Flynn, then
There is still time to learn those trades, or at least to try
If it is impossible. She might be swimming naked in the
Cerulean yards, any one of them, but lets not make much of
That. Pick up what you know, and touch your face
Lightly like an infant, like picking out a cantaloupe;
And say now, is this the one? Surely it must be, for how
Could we have any other with one so fine as this?