The Periodic Table Poem by Robert Rorabeck

How, if you came by boat,
Where there nights of peace and tranquility
Between the sloughs;
And your beautiful reflection unperceived,
And the moon over us both,
While I grew up slightly affluent, tanned,
And scarred like the wild horses
They entrained and captured to race and bet
On at the races:
Like the girls with little song with strip
For the men with the switch-blade billfolds,
This being just another quiet sound I make
Tonight instead of watching the news:
I have been around enough to see how your
Beauty lasts forever inside the art of
Damaged men,
And I am not beautiful,
And my toes are black: I am almost crippled,
But I get along through thoughts of you,
Like an overripe still life inching its way through
The sallow tide:
And I want to say your name, and bloom children
From your stems,
Compare your blood to chlorophyll, and hang you
Forever like an immortal Christmas ornament
On the periodic table.