The Planets We Cannot Touch Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What if I was to become better than a god:
Bride less, what if I rode on Pegasus instead of a carriage,
Or something else that was spilling its
Letters dreamily into the sea: open mouthed like a fish counting
Its heady weathers,
Waiting for the fabrics of art class to move it once again
Like a newly born aftermath out of my muses’ hands:
And, Sharon, maybe I did love you up and down those
Cloistering hallways of high school,
But I have to move on, and I have to breathe even if it is
Halfway made up into the tinseling limelight of
A fieldtrip half occurring in high school;
And I never loved the buses or bicycles that got me there
And now this:
I am not even beautiful, and I work on a path that is not
Even safe for a fairytale:
While she braces herself and kisses his mouth, and now they move
Together like actors in a sleepwalking dream
Across the foaming mouths of a rabid surf that doesn’t even
Deserve to be there,
And this is just for myself, while the sea is rising higher than the
Fame or egos of the planets we cannot touch,
Even higher that our neighbors’ fences, who still have to awaken
And storm into the yard, to prove that they have to be there
To exist.