The Dictum Of Innocence Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The dictum of innocence rests for awhile
In the polished clean mouth
Of the young crocodile....

Tuning in to a sterile faith,

She heard the Messiah tell her to leave me
For a clean-shaven man;
She left me standing there with
A ghost in my hand.

From the high altitude,
Where the aspens grow silver,
Upon the nape of the slow moving river;
I am a hermit of inebriate rhyme,
Brushing me teeth,
Biding this time....

In their fast moving cities of opal insurance,
Lovers lock jaws with faithless endurance;
Passing together like spores in the wind,
They forget their own names,
As others move in....

I am standing before a window
Of the bluest sky,

When she asks again if I love her,
And my muscles don’t move,
My beautiful shell stays hinged,
And stares on with the permanent things,
For that moment she’ll wonder why,
But, thankfully,
Her god brings swift change,

And quite soon she will pass herself by.