Suburban Personifications Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I am in a house 8,000 feet above the ocean
Where I ponder the many souls inside the turn-abouts
Of cities,
The languid streets who lay shivering after a rain:
That is when they are most beautiful,
And when virgins go out on long bike-rides.
Then each blade of grass in the dewy yard is a jewel,
Each yard in suburbia a square in a laconic chess-game,
Each lonely cypress in each yard dripping tearfully
But unperturbed to be alone, and even with the faintest
Wind has things to say longingly to its brothers grown
Up beside the glossy sports vehicles with state university
Decals;
Perhaps, if I were to move there, I might watch nocturnal
Mistresses step out of their front yards and drink Chablis
In silken negligees, unafraid of the trespassing raccoons.
There the lights meant to define their landscaping,
Define them just the same, so that they become
Innocuous post-modern personifications which drive
Around in the bright sunlight and across the long curling
Tresses of concrete byways whose underbellies are salted
Like pretzels by the exchanges of the sea. Again, at night,
The crickets serenade in the damp crooks of windowsills,
And they sleep as peacefully as dolls, their kitchens
In perfect order, their families parceled out into their
Purposeful rooms, their mortgage’s finish-line in sight.
I blow them a kiss from my hidden mountain,
Turn off the lights, and then step down to the cellar’s
Limbo. I sleep for months, and as I dream of them,
These faceless women living in their unending cul-de-sacs,
Like hares in peaceful gardens along long, bucolic shoulder-blades.
They turn about me, and are like shell-fish cracked open,
Brought to my steaming lips,
Wafting their mortal perfumes,
So I become heady from no other reason than because
Somewhere far out there they actually do exist.