Like Rockets Exploding For The Fourth Of July Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Fruit slipped from a Spanish vine-
Looking up, I am here:
A hold over, a fleck of gold and a snag from a river:
Look into the horse's widening eye,
And see the strange, petrifying visions
That he sees:
Rider less, worshipping a cathedral of billowing clouds:

Rattlesnakes coiling and coital at the edge of a
River on payday.
Wayward families and buses of school children going home
From church, burgeoning at the edge
Of the abyssal mountains:

Each time a rock slips off a cliff,
Comes down to a grave of someone once breathing upon the
World:
The carcass of an octopus enveloped and husked into a cenotaph
After eight weeks:
It may have well have been a miracle, a famous scientist,
A love letter:
But dying, a tryst:

Here, in the burn downed garden of crypts and melted crayons,
Satan takes off his pants and dances around,
Kissing a plastic horse made to stand there according to
The rules of man:

Like a teacher administering tests the school children
Like a politician getting elected for a second term:
Like a sperm whale eaten alive by crows at the knife edge of
The city:

Lit by your eyes,
The billboards of mascara,
The little treats and carrion that chum the roadsides
For the latchkeys and the school boys
Who turn into werewolves at the smell of you-

Like rockets exploding for the fourth of July.