Saddlebags Of Dreams Poem by Robert Rorabeck

So many choices, hull hoops of words to choose from
Near the first iterations of this other day:
Fire hydrants in the shadows and really most of America asleep;
And Erin just going to sleep in her other world
Filled with amber fanfare and things I shouldn’t like to
Think about anymore;
And it is too muggy for me to sleep so clung-scarred in my car,
And so I’m up again, leaping those old canals listening to the
Serpents and phosphorous hissing- they are coming out of
The ground in the resurrections of uncertain metamorphosis,
And I shouldn’t care to ever go back to school again,
Or to ever go to sleep again-
I just want the perfect words, and bicycles, and my fingers through
Her undying hair- There is another word for undying- something
That really isn’t alive, clinical of hair and tooth and nail,
Little things to pocket, little things to sale:
And if my muses die before me, I don’t think they would mind if
I creep into their cemeteries with nothing better on my mind
Than to collect and pocket those little things,
The piggybacks of snails and keep them in my pockets,
In my saddlebags of dreams.