The Stony Heavens Of The Overpass Poem by Robert Rorabeck

And we all must come awake one Christmas
In the soft rains and open seashells:
In the grottos of the carport beside the car our mother
Almost drowned in flipped over like a harried terrapin
In some canal
Beside some water moccasin- and it grows beautifully
Mysterious in the backwoods
Of the compounded earth when you can no longer
See your way to the mailbox:
But there it is, and the road ends at the
Canal: but there are strange neighbors across it,
And blue gills inside:
But no other ways to cross it- and the bookstores have
No meaning,
While your mother takes you to the library and shows
You pictures of other words to put to your lips:
While the apple is still falling,
And the school buses are turning around- and your
Smallest sister isn’t even yet conceived:
And the idea of the muse as your goddess is as unsentimental
As an unplaced bet at the dog track,
And the other words you will not use: a lottery of numbers
Standing out numbered before the beautiful
Indians- and death coming around while the amphibians
Sing in the aloe,
And the superheroes sleep in the grass- picked up
And carried away by the insects who live there
While the kidnappers drive by beneath the stony heavens of
The overpass.