The Old Man's Dream Tower Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Our dreams come from
The glass tower
Sparkling for ships.
There is an old man
Who lives there
Who has crystal spindles
For hips.
As we nod, it is his job
To refract the light of
The teaming in the sea:
The hungry cuttings and leaping
Of waves and slapping wind
And silver shingled fish,
To bend the movement
Through our open windows
All sailing in a front
Blown off
The Residential Coast.

There he spots us like passengers
In a jigsaw airplane unarranged
Through the clouds,
Like floating candles creating the
Monsoons of smoke.
The bulbous deluge of roofs
In rearranging constellation housing
Dark blue
Mumbling fools….

Then the light shimmies
Through the tower,
Tinkling like glasses pressed to lips
At meal time,
And crosses through his hips.
Leaping a full color spectrum,
It knocks down our
Front doors
And blows the cat
From its perch in the kitchen.
Running into our bedroom,
It jumps into bed with us,
Right into us
And tells us in secrets rushing
The tales of our doppelganging
Shadows
Who shoplift all day
Like uneducated,
Forgetful truants
In lazy strip malls
Far beneath the sea.