The Fires Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Warmed in a killjoy of passersby underneath a fountain
Lounging in the lowest clouds of the grass
Trying to be descriptive for girls who have already
Passed by
And shoeless boys playing their guitars in the shallowest
Of estuaries
Listening to the hungriest roaring of the most
Obnoxious of airplanes: Knowing this is their art
While their souls leave them like spent gasoline
While the coral snakes kiss them in the
Certain perpetuities of the yard and the children who no
Longer belong, grow up and set up across their
Bridges, never mind the abuses of their heavens
Because their parents still haven’t returned home
And the sky above their houses is filled with the paper
Shapes that don’t even know how to start the fires
In which they burn