Like Butterflies Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I cannot remember how I have not slept beside you,
Bottle rocket across the canal,
Leopard without any spots—
Above me, just the tan elbows of airplanes—
The soft joy taken across the lazy, one-eyed river
And made love to
While the girls and the boys are at a completely
Platonic picnic,
And grandmother has been preparing for
Christmas—
Well, school is out and the prospects the baseball
Game are not half bad—
We can only move upwards from here:
Seeing there is so much joy in airplanes leaping,
Like puppets being thrown up to the sweet armpits
Of god—
And me languishing on the cinderblock steps,
The soft pattering of the bullfrogs—
And the snake curled up underneath the hollow,
Belly filled by kittens,
The housewife in her negligee doesn’t know—
The aloe tingles like wind-chimes expectantly—
The world of yellow nimbus,
The fruit of wind-chimes,
And the long bus rides home to think of these
Things while the children whisper and grasp
Like butterflies.