Love To A Lovely Day Poem by Robert Rorabeck

For awhile the dragon didn’t have to
Drink:
Even for the lives of some men, the intelligent
Beast
Could sustain itself with thoughts of your love,
A graveyard,
A carport all a-hush:
And the moons were pillows of Siamese twins or
Ex-lovers;
And the pretty birds sighed over where the cat
Smiled,
And the dragon wept for a great long while,
Remembering the arrow-head of love you
Planted in him
While just a girl: How you brought him down,
And he built a house and
Practiced being a man while you got married and
Fell in love,
Bared hillsides of children; and thus were gone,
And the Dragon
Drank nothing
Because he could see the windmills over the cross of
Your grave
Like a smoking transom:
A cracker-jack shot, you had killed him and returned
Your gold to your lips where it belonged,
And he lingered
Like a sack of bones in a suburban playground filled
With the happy thoughts of your
Successors’ blonds, the echo of your lipstick
War cry multiplying,
And he cursed every angel he knew with the pestilent
Rancor of his
Overripe immortality
Tasted from the fruit of your tree and fallen so swiftly,
Just like a man fallen restlessly into an open grave
Cursed to always look up and see your chariot
Making love to a lovely day.