Misty Fingerprints Poem by Robert Rorabeck

So, you said, everyday goes around like this,
Like a rink of rented skates and cusped hands
And floating lights,
Heaven on Earth, and keys and rock candy,
And across congress airplanes where my mother is
Taking lessons,
Turning around in figures of infinity, going on by herself:
Just a tiny picture in an infinite mirror
Where all the animals see themselves;
And palmettos spray- and sweat inching like apple-snails
Down the coppery calves of working girls,
And overpasses where their kind of rich belong,
Shading flea-markets irritating the dilapidated earth;
And you can go north or south from here,
But there will forever be so many cars telling this way
Or that, and the distant sounds of frightened horses
Confusing seismologists with their soft manes and love-
Letters, a lullaby for the earth and all of its fossils,
The gray meats which sometimes contain the silhouettes
Of hummingbirds,
Just a blur in the rocky strata, the absence of polished
Birthstones, un-mined by shoppers on blissful holidays,
Paintings on a cave,
Misty fingerprints on a phone that never stops ringing.