Nothing Slips Out Of Her Dress Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Nothing slips out of her dress
And disappears into the sky—
Across the street, they are having
A wedding and I am not invited,
But the moonless night walks by;
My feet clap on the sidewalk
Beneath the lights like languorous dancers
At a prom that is over and done,
But no one lifts their heads my way.
They are too busy mingling with
Their drinks, pink martinis and flamingos
Though the bride,
She looks young again as she smiles at him—
When I have nothing left to say,
My childhood friends are getting drunk
Under the steps leading down to the sea,
And their lips are swimming in green smoke,
So their eyes dilate on each other
As the waves undulate like an army of whores
In a swim meet
Against their secret enclave—
They are singing, everybody wants to get paid,
While a dead woman with waverly eyes
Sleeps in the bending limed knees of the mangroves.
There, the nourishing ray lays quiet in a bed
Of somber sand, as above on cypress bark
The mantises pray,
And cicadas sing as they shed their old identities,
And even without ceremonies like in the mowed
Yards of people who live day to day
In the backyard patios where ribbons of
Effluvious light swim out from the sunlight’s
Cascade upon the screened-in pools,
They are able to change themselves— to
Leave those old husks clinging
Like the deceased upon the mosses
Hidden in the discreet ferns’ shade as
Nothing slips out of her dress
And disappears into the sky—