That They Didn'T Know The Word For Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This really shouldn’t be your job:
The world has struck you down and made you as
Beautiful as broken glass;
And it is the other girls who can fly and goof off for their
Captains:
Just as it is the other waves that come with crushes for the
Other starlets,
And I am just about to have a little home with a coquina fireplace,
And I will think of you in the madness of that twilight
While I make love to working girls who are even
Better looking than you are:
Working girls whose dreams are untamed that go on forever
Cursing over the hills of that suburbia they tore down:
Like a baker’s dozen of Melodies, like olive-skinned girls
Lost in an orchard far into the darkness after picking time,
And looking up remember the stars and maybe
Point to the exact aspect that they fell from:
That they never had to compare themselves to the fox leaping for
The other woman’s grapes,
And that was so beautiful, and so pure, and maybe something else,
Except that they didn’t know the word for.