The Aces' Element Poem by Robert Rorabeck

In the middle of the mechanic’s summer,
Defeated by the upper presumptions,
I wait for snow;
No longer liberal, I get drunk at air shows,
Have hallucinations of her eyes
Through the thorny cornfields;
The floraline cactus prick the plane propellers;
The Japanese zeros fishing in the cornucopias;
The blistered space I see full of prime letters,
The little tricks she plays to escape her impressive father,
To sneak away to the debtors prison,
And marry the Christian author there who
Self published before the arid blizzard, the great depression
Of tin-can squatters, the early death
Hungry in the gas tank of the bank robbers’ Hudson,
Sleeping on the concrete riverbanks beneath
The buzzing overpasses;

The squash and orchids vibrate with the
Hesitant rain shower’s full presumption;
Then she steps out of the passenger’s door and stands up-
She is always seven in the staggering hills of brambly windmills,
A gift from France,
Turning heads like rubbernecked gawkers;
The factory workers winnowing this invisible commodity,

As her lips do, breathing-
Her heart the thumping propeller turning towards the
Scorch and burn, as Sherman’s army marched to the sea;
The snowbirds migrate towards the trailer parks at the lips of
Kind waves,
The silver birds turn and gyre in inevitable majesty above
Our uninhibited brow;
We are the proletariat watching the rehearsal of better angels’ wow;

The staged dogfights we pay to see,
Her legs scissor like the aces’ element,
The streamlined accompaniments of bombshell evolution,
The sexy companion to lucky though lesser men.