The Bridal Harem For The Holy Ghost Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Composures in the quiet rain,
Slicking the vociferous traffics until they
Pure demurely and finally into stillness
In their carports like castanets;
And my mind glides like a kite over a terrapin
Sated in his slow, funny moods,
That he has been to California and done nothing
There but made love to a ghost hunchbacked in
The tall weeds,
Or played in the mystified parks after closing hours,
Because he couldn’t think to get a real job:
And there was a hill at the end of the little town
With a road that first went over and then behind
The rise,
And it could have gone to anywhere, but he never
Supposed to see,
For it seemed then that all places were the same,
All liquors for a bribe,
But he still thought he would find love from time
To time,
At traffic stops, or in his quieting times,
And maybe he would have if he’d been able to enter
The skin of another story,
But sorrowfully this one is his, and all the pretty girls
Are sweet grapes tremulous on the vine,
Always dancing and smiling down to him lying that
They are just moonlight,
Not giving into him or even coming close,
But stopping there, well gibbous, as if they might one
Day fall into his sallow heart,
When they are only the bridal harem for the holy
Ghost.