The First Fireworks Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Birthed from the soul of some suicidal great
Grandfather, whose own sire was shot in the mouth
Over the civil war:
So I do these things: teach in a diminutive room
With now windows for six hundred dollars a
Week—
Thinking of a woman I can no longer have,
Who I shouldn't have wanted in the first place—
So long ago, since when the first fireworks
Wanted for fire—
And the first mermaids experienced metamorphosis
Like tadpoles around the ankles of the briny
Cenotaphs.
Now we only have strip shows and dog tracks—
No clear way out of here—
Crepuscule descends over the parklands and
Graveyards—ferris wheels still believing in
Some place that is preternaturally beautiful—
And migrating over and over
Just in the hope of seeing her pretty face.