The Spells Of Rumor Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I’m so drunk that my fingers no longer have
Their own androgynous feeling,
And I’m fourteen at the movies of Wellington
Trying to catch eyes to make out;
And I’ve got to get out of the shadow of these
Housewives,
But I have an entire bottle to finish up
And some time before she gets off work, and an entire menu
To peruse at the ice-cream parlor,
And the week’s spelling list to memorize.
The sleepy alligator down at the end of the driveway
Is watching me: He has your eyes and I have
Nothing else to say: she is in love with you too,
And maybe she’ll make you change your persuasion with
The miracles she performs with her tongue,
Or so the spells of rumor go,
But I am otherwise quite lazy, and I have no friends,
Nor the patience to teach my pets better tricks;
And I will not live forever, for when I die I will stop making
Believe, but lie down and smile up to the soft bellies
Of airplanes where you still go leaping,
Or maybe it is your daughter now, smiling, hand on hip,
Serving the better middle-classes who,
Not having yet learned their lessons, are trying on newer
Wings, trying to skip like stones, to tease like wishes,
Those younger gods you can never fail to interest.