Of The Day She Must Be Married Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Radishes curled on a table of white,
Placed there blushingly by my love’s brown fingers under the
Twin penumbras of the maroon coolers
In the open cavities of daylight where the sore throats of
Feral cats used to sing all night: never wanting more
Than I have wanted you,
While the piecemeal traffic stumbles through; and it is a spectacle,
And somewhere atop of it like the icing on the cake,
The lost and premature angels draw their bull horns and sing a
Fright:
Because they were lost before they even got to school;
But only if they would look down to see your brown avenues
Smiling so giddy as to seem so innocent,
Like a lighthouse that has never had to turn its face to the conundrums
Of the drowning sailor, like a petrified mother watching
As their some months old child is surrounded by
Rattlesnakes through the deadfall of pitchfork pines,
And thus dumbly amused by their warning signals
Until the fatal strike-
And the venom’s meal sets out through the vineyard of the untried
Avenues- like grains of sand who think of seashells,
Or my little sister daydreaming on the school bus of the day
She must be married.