The Bend Of Another Careless Century Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Racetracks of spell craft and little girls entwined
Into forget-me-nots;
And today we got in Indian corn and pumpkin squash,
And Romero mowed the track of land where’ll
I’ll be through Christmas,
And my mother echoes through the weak shadows-
Where is she? Maybe she is in my adolescent Spain;
And I want you in my gardens of chalk,
My balmy two degrees of vision in your mustard frock:
And want to put on so many dazzling displays for you:
I want to go off in showers of silver palms-
I want to be the spikenard growing out of the faceless
Eyes of the greater eaten by giant grows halfway up
Chomolonga- Look at how he always goes,
Pointing to where they finally found George Mallory,
Like a scarred flower spumed by Chinese skree:
And the mosquitoes straw the blood from my calves
After I jogged twenty laps underneath the airplanes’ ballet:
One time I even jogged the length of a marathon alone
Into salty crepuscule in Okaheelee Park with only the
Torpid jewels of alligator’s to witness me- But even then
I was thinking of you, and it’s as if I were now there,
Turned up all of a sudden like a dead but famous hiker around
The bend of another careless century.