The Sundail's Mechanism Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The sun sets gently in the backyard of suburbia,
The pools glisten like diamonds scattered in the grass;
These mortgaged heirlooms smelling of chlorine
And the children’s inflated laughter;
On Sundays, lovers tan in their bathing suites,
Let the salt of their affected kisses begin to pretzel their bodies.
Fathers with beers in hand, turn the hotdogs on the grills,
Listen to the football game in the yellow splash of yard,
While the sons are shooting off pop rockets over the
Canal, using glass coke bottles of refundable patriotism,
And sisters are curled up with dolls on the teal easement,
Curiously watching the alligators sunbathe and
Fart the monotonous prehistory of their reptilian genealogies;
Nothing about it is entirely real, as the red ants
Comb the grass, each blade a green column of its photosynthesis;
While, mothers in their kitchens cry a whispering melody
Into their watermarked catalogue of wine glasses,
And airplanes shoot silver-bellied over the scene, like
Leaping fish, soon to settle on the capricious tarmac;
Something like a dream, wavering to and fro
In the cycles of the sun’s authenticating aura, each body
And specter there of, a shadow of comprehensive time
In the sundial’s exacting mechanism.