Swan At Some Distance Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Bannered and awaiting the snows, don’t
You sit and wait under your mountain of all things-
Like a dark eyed jewel:
Alone, on a dark road near sea level,
So far beneath you, I have sexual dreams of taking you
Along Southern Blvd,
And you are so needy and pressed
Like something god has been kind enough to
Return; and you don’t know how to play
Soccer; and I am a dream myself in roller-skates
In the crepuscule of soft dinners,
Your eyes engorging on the fictionalized ice-creams
Of that wild satellite that isn’t even real.
A mollusk travels across the dog hair on my pillow,
Gets caught in the sharp tinsel of my scars;
And I awaken and moan. Even before I awaken, I sense
That it is the barren establishment the sun’s strings are returning
Me into- the silver fish blue lipped on the prow of his
Apathetic ship- and here I’ve never been able to achieve
The rights of beauty. For there you are all done up
With your man, and I am left to strive alone in perpetually
Venal motions- freckled by a consumption of green
Scars, the vermilion decrepitude that used to make you think
From across the room that I might be a swan.