Over The Candle's Leaping Flame Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Penumbra- forgotten echo over a rose,
Like a fingerprint over a theft-
This is my newborn amusement for you-
Silk of amber sleep trailing out
Along the page,
As if your children looking up into a magisterial
Gust of an airplane:
Who knows what they will actually think of
This once it actually lies done-
And forgotten-
Underneath the swing-sets over the graveyards:
Perfumes of fruit too softly sweetened
So they fall and lie against the adventures of a rattlesnake’s
Kiss: they lie like the pornography stamped at
The dog’s hoof,
Underneath the heavens of windmills-
They have all turned out so suddenly as to be unrealized
Tricks- as the tourists busy up the motels
Underneath the mountains who
Personify the uneasy stairwells that we all lie
Under- mumbling our dreams or whatever underneath
The surer feet of the giants who are never named:
Just as the stewardesses learn how to leap over the candle’s
Leaping flame.