Red In The Handlebars Of The Sun Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Red in the handlebars of the sun,
Something always gold-
And I can hardly hold on:
I don’t like to look where she is milking,
Busily enfolded with men from the earth
Who have learned to stand up straight
And dress well for the possibility of
Her sex:
But I like to think she’s looking at me,
Like something rather devilishly pollinated:
Something that can be bought for free-
There lapping, lapping almost broken
In the come along weeds;
And her soul is fibrous and doesn’t digest
Easily- she works all day in her habitat
Of kiln dried clay- and the Busters queue;
And I like to ride around her, red in the
Handlebars of the sun,
Until mother calls me home to dinner, and the
Woods quiet, turn sepia and religious;
And I know planes are touching down-
But there is so much I have missed,
While she is busily congratulated, ornamented-
She is wedded into a sappy bough thrashed
To kill the gold of her day-
She is spread out the way a river mutates into mud;
And she is even more beautiful in secret, but there
She is gone-
The only thing left of her is my red face,
Just the flesh caught memory of being
When her bosom glistered before its epitaph red in
The handlebars of the sun.