Of Their Wish's Flame Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Pages turning to the yellow crayon dust of
A soul,
And a fox who has learned to walk steps out
Underneath a jealous streetlight—
There are robbers in the graveyard—and
Thieves of airplanes in the sky—
The classrooms are emptied, and the ways
He has been thinking about it are emptied—
He has echoes of the thoughts of going home:
The road in his mind used to be like going
Into the caracoles of a shell
Where you can still hear the oceans of her
Name,
Before she forced him into the venal metamorphosis
Of an all too common jealousy,
Taking her fried chicken and watermelons up
Into the clouds—sharing and sleeping with pilots
And their stewardesses—never looking down
To where is mobiles hung, limpid—
Where he continued jumping his impotence—
Like birthday candles burned out of their wish's flame.