The Evening Missive Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Quartz sloops sail the depressive mountain,
Brushing the coned lips of steaming pines,
Where the slumbering half-light tips towards
The forgetful holidays, where the mulberries
Grow entwined with the recitations of failed criminals-
Black men stripped in blue denim nod with the elements;
Grouse pull teeth like camouflaging dentists,
Beneath the cicadas removing the flack, yesterday’s practitioners,
So that their legs can fiddle, which always brings evening;
Sad in a long black veil of weeping distances,
The nibble flood of the sinking grief colonnaded by shadow;
On the expressionless pine needles, she kneels wishing to hear
The sea, though the whispering hills of unconfirmed forests,
The pews of mineral, and clefts of burgundy insects;
This certain answer greets her prayers, as the wind
Winnows the clouds a piece, and the prince of rattlesnakes
Approaching slithers, opening the venomous jaw, offers
A kiss to the sensitive joints of the hand’s missive wrist.