Our Long Lost Places Poem by Robert Rorabeck

A red dragon of fireworks smiling lusciously tongued:
Giving clues to the out of work helpers-
The men who pass the green smoke underneath the overpasses
As it rains
Diamonds with your name on them- the way both of your children
Tugged the way they did in the summers
Before I knew you and smuggled you to my bedroom:
Just because maybe now they are calling out through their fanfare
That maybe I am a playboy;
But maybe I am just coming around, circumnavigating-
Appreciating the features of the fairytales of your
Landscaping,
Alma- And I a just getting started: soon I will be drunk,
And it will be your man’s birthday- but what can we give to him
But the emptiness that he left in you,
So that it has allowed me to build you up in your flesh;
And turn you by the jaw to the sea, which is your mirror,
Even as you come home from Ocala from visiting
His relatives for Christmas- even though I spent it mostly alone,
Or with a jumble of strangers at the movies:
While my old girlfriend’s new child was infinitely tugging-
Until I drank something with fire,
And made your soul spill out of its car and linger in my eyesight
Light a precious jewel bleeding off its illusions beneath the motes
Of starlight which spotlight our long lost places of work
When neither of us happen to be there.