The Lilacs Poem by Robert Rorabeck

They have their own rattle snakes in the shadows—
Just as every skeleton once had a tongue
Bespeaking of eyelids as curtains:
And feet with toes for a soft or horned road
Leading beside the estuaries of the university:
Then it is not a long ways off to find her—maybe in a canoe
Floating as if in pieta just over the rippling of
Otters and stolen bicycles:
Maybe you will hear how the half-nude housewives
Call down to her—bare breasted and next to those orange
Trees up the burry easement—
As the horses sniff the lilacs and dream of drinking from
Honeyed decanters—
As the airplanes make their patterns, lackadaisically
As so far above the mismanaged schools—just as they so
Often do.