The Housecat's Grin Poem by Robert Rorabeck

When it rains, stay in the library and read of arks,
And nod your head, and pretend to study while you drift,
Your drool leaving a watermark on page six,
Like a mollusk was there and then ran down your elbow
And off the world, just beginning

Though outside the little park is in a recession,
But the children still swing, like bigots or pugilists,
Over the hills of pumpkins, before the getting chill,
And even as you go out to them, they begin to fade,
They begin to crumple and return to the depression residences,
Like cells of encumbered thoraxes, so many anonymous
Behind the windows from where you stand,

And sparrows which no longer sing, or choose to migrate,
May eat a worm when the sun comes out, may fly above her house
Though they never watch her undress all lonely some evening,
For that is because she’s not lived here for a decade,
Where little wings of songs disappear inside the housecat’s grin,

Before I’ve come down again strolling beneath the embers
And palms, trying to catch a glance at her through the drying wishes,
The sidewalk encumbering cracks where red ants plume;
Even after the sky has evaporated its sadness, and blushes a leaping prism,
The said choreography of the divine,

I’ve followed it past her where she is kissing like a stone
On a hidden bench, perpetually motivating the stillness of nightfall;
It only ends in the dead fire-pits, the broken heaps,
Where mosquitoes queue to the ululations of homeless reptiles,
Those who bask ironically in the defeated promises of his love.