The Pitiless Streams Of Nocturnal Traffic Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If the day is gray in Florida, why shouldn’t it be Michigan;
While I am spending my last few days with my parents in their
RV,
And then I shall have my own home: my own quieted space so near
To the sea who can so easily be called my muse:
She is apathetic and she doesn’t care: men can sell ice-cream right
Out in front of her, and she doesn’t
Care:
Men who fish in her throat, laying lines into her, even going down
Breathlessly on her, moaning into the ballrooms that she drinks:
She just goes on and on, besmirched in her waltzes, sloshing her
Spirits and her boats;
And I am always trying to cultivate new rhymes like bouquets for
Her in my tremulating latch-key neighborhoods, pressed into
The strange and white-faced peninsula, like a starving child licking
His finger against the wind, like the rich perfumes of a night blooming
Jasmine striking out in the pitiless streams of nocturnal traffic that
She moats.