Pilots For Christmas Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The champions sang their songs whilst I was sleep
Or, rather,
They laid down and made love in the carport underneath
The ceiling fan and the other bothers
Of paper airplanes and tangerine spores:
And whatever art there was about me forgot itself and
Settled down to watch racecars
Going around one specific scar of the earth like hula-hoops—
As the cowboys looked brazenly under the skirts of
A barbwire waitress who had come down from
The gaslight only the night before—
Metamorphosed from a stewardess while the planes
Leapt into a blue and weeping sky—
And the children tucked themselves in for Christmas
While their fathers, all pilots,
Were forever so far away.