The Nocturnal Summertine Of A Celestial Carrousel Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Nothing else is beautiful,
Because I didn’t stop by the liquor store
And I can’t count to high numbers;
And I’ve forgotten what I consequently learned
In college,
So forgetful even then when the leaves were turning,
When it took them forever to touch the earth,
To drip upon their family the syrupy inclinations
Of that season’s incest;
Grey haired and ringed, a desultory creature of
These mountains, still in love with his mother,
You can tell by which way I am coming if you listen
For the lulling tongues of my dogs.
Otherwise, I can’t even recognize myself anymore,
When I drive to and from town displacing the air
Ever so slightly with my inherited wings,
Listening to the crinkly roar of young mothers all ablaze
At the supermarket,
I pick out a movie to slip into tonight, and so the stars
Begin their celestial alignments like beautiful teenage
Dancers courting too far above my head to smell,
To even begin to suggest upon their prophecies;
Yet, senselessly they perfume me,
And yet so very high up they turn perfectly contented in
Their airless bedrooms;
I imagine their flairs crying for what boys they love,
Even their earliest light anciently shed,
So that if I might look upon their bright camouflage,
Like a nest of fire-lit muses insighted, I could only make
Up names for them, and they wouldn’t come when
I called, but they are all just as beautiful
As if I lived at home with them,
An their names seem to echo around the earth, basking
The spiritual pugilisms of atheists and the more devoted vertebrae
In the nocturnal summertime of a celestial carrousel.