The Lacquered Stages Filled With Grinning Dogs Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I can never begin to start a new life:
I just keep rhyming again for the empty dens of sand lions
And house wives:
We saw them together getting out of the zoo:
So many children and each with two legs and two shoes:
This is how the earliest and newest life
Proceeds to move:
Away from sweet dens of rest to other dens too:
They come sweeping across our shoulders like the satin threads
Of Cinderellas who
Never have to change back again:
And we can watch them go and spread out around us through
The day, Alma,
Even though they are nothing like us:
They make a beautiful show like birds who are injured but
Have been cared for and thus still survive:
My mother and father are going back to Arizona,
But that strange desert holds no more meaning for me, even though
I am alone in my house,
I held you near me today, and enjoyed you in every which way,
Like the astronauts enjoy the stars,
And the words I breathe come out in unwholesome circles and
Caracoles like little girls who are just learning to swim,
Or ballerinas who are terribly afraid of the lacquered stages filled
With grinning dogs.