The Latchkey Who Lets Her Out To Play Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Rum and cold in the ice world-
All of it some lazy science-fiction:
Pegasus in the grander canyons above
Olympic unicorns,
Everything in the low altitude rivers
Of light winged traffics:
Scars like the Aurora Borealis over
Pet Cemeteries over
France
Or Michigan,
Or the birth place of my mother:
Colorado streets,
Where they invented electricity and wore
Pencil thin mustaches:
I thought to reinvent immortality:
But dragons were already smoking like hot
Baths in her bed chambers,
Clutches of stones wisped at by smoke
As if for bees.
They made all the flowers I’d bought for her curl up
Frilly heads like
Folding up lingerie.
The pinwheels like hurricanes like
Windmills never really clearing their heads,
The antechambers of busty,
Perfumed airplanes.
I just want to be gobbled up by goblins:
I want to be the plate Erin finishes, coming home from
A long day,
As giant and beautiful as the sea.
She can fit right over the world like the earliest god
Has forgotten about,
That Jove locked away in my heart to forget about,
But I can be the latchkey who lets her out to play.