Past Of Absent Memory Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have placed you here in the rainstorm beside the pool—
Made you into the aestheticism of
Things that cannot spell:
I have lost you here, and listened for you for a long while:
I have grown a gut and I have rusted with the
Bicycles that have been carried up from
The sapplings metamorphosed into the springing trees:
Thinking to find beauty in what we used to have—
And not able to put it away—even though the pilots and
Their stewardesses have turned into great uncles
And aunts in the sky—watched forever by open jawed
Titans, flatulent in their castles at the high end
Of the beanstalks—where they have looted
All of the gold of the stories I have tried telling you
To bring you home from a past of absent memory.