The Only Gods They Can Understand Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Off in a tent
Just after being married- all the words left
Her tongue:
Naked, the trees sparkling outside,
The sky wandering like shadows through an
Opulent orchard;
And she bends like a ripe instrument
Trying to detect the coming hour
Of his touch,
And the children that will swim in her
Symmetry,
Counting their nascent chalk games like
Innocent serpents finding their
Way into a park
Where the vultures sing like angels
Around which the housewives live and change
Into the same things at dusk,
After dinner:
And like mailboxes they are filled with bills
And love letters-
While some other fellow’s cats prowl the night,
Swinging their tails through the moats
Smudging the yards
And talking to the only gods they can understand.