Something Mistaken For A Poem Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Alone, like the juvenile plum tree
Crowned by hungry wings,
And the sun crawling through
My limbs like a drunk woman
Looking for a place to nap,
This is what I’ve seen
High up on the volcanic cap
Of the waitress’ stung nipple:

A poem the butterfly mistook for
A flower,
And setting upon it to assist its
Pollination,
Realized that it was sickly sweet,
And not a flower at all,
For all the flies,
But a poem, and not one of spring
And bottle caps,
But a poem of death leaving nothing
For the butterfly to perform.
Thus, the angels continued their
Migrations down past the black
Eels and coral,
Relinquishing the poem back into
The somber yard where crickets violin
Beneath the moths and moonlights

It budded forlorn and beautiful
In the gnarled lap of cypress roots
Living just two nights
Before it was devoured by a toad
Who mistook it for a mantis,
Saying as it went,
“I go. I go. At last I go, ”
For even it did not know what it was.