Swathing Synthetics Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Bruised lips on a mannequin,
I can write of nothing more. There are houses
On the shore of the river, and her eyes
Are the gray green of a gothic romance.
I stare at them in pictures and lithographs,
And the shifty brail of sandpaper.
This is the girl I wanted to kiss, whose direction
I turned to when I performed my poetry on
The stage of high school I was infamous for;
Because of her I asked my parents about marriage,
But what could they say,
For at my age they were too busy picking lettuce
In the sun chalked fields to fall in love,
The bitter romance of one of Hardy’s novels,
And she remains as beautiful as Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
This girl; if I went back to college I could find
Her ghost, gray and whispering, whispering
Even words she should not recall, the red bricked
Halls of knowledgeful earth, the silky dreams
Awaken in hazarding light upon the soccer field’s
Pestilence; we have all slipped away, and to
Return would only make us disappear in untrustworthy
Looks, but judging from what I can tell, her lips
Could still fill a well, and she is married
And busily entrepreneurial, and knows all about
My swill. I should have stayed in the wrecked train cars
In California; I should not have left junior college,
Or listened to the guidance councilor, but I have
Already written her a book filled with open wounds,
I wrote from the high basins and summits where looking
Down her city was a swarm of sombulent fireflies,
Hibernating in the blanketing snows,
Burning glacial pools to clean their bodies,
And her husband is a good man, and she is a good woman
For him, and they will make money and children,
And fill the quiet spaces with the tide and undulations;
For this I know, her picture careworn from high school,
Her hands on the clay wheel where pottery spindles
Like little girls, and everything else that has grown up,
Gone away, is no longer real.