The Natural Forces Of Her Echoes Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Another holiday lost as we go piggybacked
To our grandmothers,
And the love of the late afternoon is strange:
But there are birds up in the sky
With airplanes
Migrating in winter- in a weird tapestry
And her shoulders are as brown
As honey
The cicadas and katydids become stuck to
Like leggy freckles
As she bends over the water fountain,
Her hair falling and
Bouncing,
As her lips take a drink- and if she hasn’t yet
Kissed a rose,
She should do so now:
Before the busses come, and the wolves come,
And all of the other days come to her
Expectantly-
And she is lost in the natural forces of her echoes-
And cannot even remember the way
I looked at her
As she bent over the water fountain
In a hallway we both shared.