The Last Days Of The Living Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The best specters reside underneath the bleachers
After the crowd of parents have done cheering,
And the popcorn is empty, the rains come hurdling
Oldsmobiles and Fords painted so cheery,
Have caravanned back again to the green suppositions,
The mortgages and cabinets of pills;
The whitest stones placed as if in laconic offerings:
There is a hidden park up the slope from the alligators,
Where from the swing-set echoes the laughter of little girls,
And the footsteps of truants sneaking in the afternoons,
Too early, how they would like to kiss the necks
Above the opened windows: How they move infinitesimal,
The circulations of society, naturally, stem from the
Suffocations of the first incisions, those who were cast
Away and are living beneath them, in palpitating amputations;
They moan from the red oval of their persistent allocation,
Attached to the lucidity of the broken sparrow,
Just words now, reciting, lovers leaving messages,
Harkening, they see
Through the introspection of the abandoned quarry,
Naked ankles come flocking by them, and young girls again
Are laughing, for that is from the well where up-springs
Mirages brightly singing, even far after the last days of the living.