The No Particular Disaster Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Fall into the games of dead men,
The no particular disaster.
I had never before been out
In this late of an afternoon,
And I shouldn’t....
For they are making love in the barn,
Just painted and yet coagulated,
And the rattlesnakes are catching,
In their venomous solar diamonds,
The last of the drowsy sky
Where the ghost ships begin to creak,
Loud and unafraid
Their men taunting me worse
Than they have ever done before:
They are playing the games of
A kindergarten, stretching out the hours,
Throwing back the rum they cannot taste,
And tossing the weighted bones....
The cats are yet still sleeping in the
Lengthening shallow places of
Convenient shadows, and they will
Wake up again, nice and clean,
As the lovers step out of the red barn
Smelling just like the others....
But they will not have to say a thing,
As the gray felines step between them,
Swishing their tails.