Once White Sheets Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I want you to come over here
And plunder my trousers—
Don’t think about it or
Your father’s starched collar will get in the way.

Don’t take your time about it,
Become an underwater welder
And plunge into the work with
The passion of a 5th grader
On the first day of his course.

Here you will find on me those planets
Every man has, to which women are constant satellites,
But these ones are particularly mine,
And they are here for you to move around.

My family’s lineage extends to you here passionate
Greetings,
In my misty currencies I wish to deposit,
In your silken hand bag, if you will lean back
And open your legs like a good girl,

Your otter’s mouth when it swims
About on your lake with hot springs and caribou,
Kicking back and forth and forth and back,
Like a sloppy fish,
Slapping it’s tale on my rosy branch.

I will fill you up, fox of my den.
I will let you down, little blue bird into
The serpent’s mouth
If you are a good handler
If you say my name in your prayers and
Kneel before God, and wash up
Before you eat

We will do these time and time again,
Our mutual baptisms underneath the sneaky alders,
Through the green rivers the sun hues,
Like a yellow mason, his palms out and placing
Red brick on hot red brick, building for us
A school house in which we learn.

And I see, your silken joy says you will,
Your lips and eyes pay up and there is dyed
Blue smoke coming from your bones’ kettle,

So every young nuance of your being
Starts to stiffen and coil, before your springs
Are unhinged, like broken golden clock gears,
And you are screaming my name, as I
Asked you to, and time has stopped

So now all the concreted cities shed away,
Rotted petals washed down,
School buses collapse like drowsy horse heads
Into mouths of chirping green swamps,

Where the vase of heady night, shrill
And delicate on the edge of the table,
Begins to fill up with red hunted roses
By our exchanges,

So soon we are panting from our rich diggings,
Our hands filled with each others gold,
So we laugh and kiss, satisfied and filthy,
Until the deluge bends our flowers,
And moistens the matted grasses,
Leaving only the ringing of our ears,
The echo of our caves,

As the trees drip and hum in
The last of our moistures,
The last of our evidence on these
Once white sheets.