No One Outside To See Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I try to write a novel. It goes nowhere,
For a half hour a day, while the ravens make love
And then defecate like spots of summer snow on
Rotting wood; it should really be a movie,
Feckless and waiting for the bus to display
Like a cloudy eucatastrophe forth from red holly,
The cradle for indigenous serpents, and legless saboteurs.
I had this idea, and it involved men and the sea,
She was an early goddess, now, defunct:
A waitress with sagging breast, varicose, wrinkled
Shagging cigarettes, though beautiful with a chainsaw
Purring from her throat- i am volatile, like close history,
Shaking before the cadaver slumbering on display
In the center of the theatre, like pre-science, and the first
Small metal sent up into the sky to parlay the lightning;
Her surf is malleable, the shore palatial, though barren-
If studied, predictable, but still no less violent,
And, afterwards, forgetful, awful- the way footsteps
Come inevitably down the stairs, how the knuckles rasp
The lonely flesh of the door, how the solicitors ring persistently,
And finally, how the rains show that the sunlight is deceitful,
And thus flood the lawn and make suppliant each flower and
Tree, and give the beautiful slick colors to the road,
In such afternoons when there should be no one outside to see.